For women only, and the men who love us

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

This is a girlfriend chat – a conversation between one woman and other women. The men who read this should pass on the message to all the women in their lives who are 40 years of age and above. October is being celebrated throughout the world as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It is a unique chance to remind all women of the importance of checking out their breasts for lumps and any other abnormalities.

What you don’t know can kill you. That explains why a biopsy is always better than an autopsy. Both seek to find out the cause of diseases. But whilst a biopsy is conducted from a problem solving mind-set, an autopsy finds out when it is too late. Similarly, early detection of breast cancer increases the chance of saving the breasts and of saving life. Statistics show that black women are twice as likely as white women to get breast cancer. Sister friend, you and I are as black as black can be so the chances of breast cancer knocking rudely at our life’s door is pretty high.

If you are the conservative type and therefore uncomfortable to use the word breast, you could simply refer to them as your ‘girls’. These girls are our precious assets and we must take very good care of them like we would take care of any other treasure. When they are ignored, they are capable of leaving misery in their wake, the kind of misery which passeth all understanding. We should therefore take care of our breasts by checking them regularly, so we can detect abnormalities. Ask your female friends and loved ones: “Have you had your girls checked lately?”

Here is a story from my childhood. I witnessed breast cancer in all its bitterness when I was just a little girl, at about ten years old. My grandfather’s younger sister was literally eaten away by the unseen monster. I didn’t know what it was by name, but knew that a disease was slowly but surely burrowing its sharp deadly teeth into my grandaunt’s chest. It felt like having an unwelcome visitor in your home, an invasion of some sort – and the visitor stays on with vengeance, until mission is accomplished – whatever it determines the mission to be.

Those days, breast cancer was a taboo subject. A respectable person would not talk about the breast in public; it was indecent language. It was as if it was more dignifying to die of breast cancer than to talk about a diseased breast! Breasts belong to the category of body parts known as ‘private.’ They are so private that they are usually shrouded in secrecy. These are mostly reproductive organs that are sources of pleasure in secrecy so one was (is?) required to shy away from them in public discourse. But fortunately, that was then; and this is now. We can and must talk about breast cancer.

My grandaunt’s story happened many yesteryears ago but because of the horrific nature of the experience, the memories are still vivid as if it happened only in a recent yesteryear. Some memories are so deep-seated that you don’t need a photograph or any form of recording to capture them into permanency. I bore witness to breast cancer at that young age and therefore froze the memory, forever.

The monster entered via one of her breast and dug in; or, it was already inside, unseen, but peaked outside to announce its unholy presence. After it had made my grandaunt’s chest its home, it dug deeper by spreading into the other breast, chewing other things in its path on the deadly but sneaky viral journey. Then came maggots, as if they were the unholy children of the mature breast cancer! The breasts shrivelled, as they should under such a trying ordeal.

Sometime during the breast cancer drama, my grandfather travelled with his kid sister to a far away place to seek herbal treatment. I recall that they returned with some concoctions which were regularly slapped onto the festering cancer crevice. As if in defiance of African medical concoctions, the cancer continued to spread, jubilantly. Besides, medical advancement to fight breast cancer was at the time, at best, rudimentary.

In the midst of all those uncertainties, the rude breast cancer trampled on the entire extended family, taking away my grandaunt’s dignity in the process. There was so much moaning and groaning, amidst grinding of teeth of biblical proportions. My grandaunt was a smallish woman. By the time she finally died, she was not left with much of a body. Pain and misery can suck away at the flesh, beyond measure.

That was then, several yesteryears ago. Those days, when diagnosed with breast cancer, you had the option of having the affected breast surgically removed on the wings of prayers that the cancer was seated only in that particular breast. Those days, there was no chemotherapy, radiotherapy or any of the other screening methods available today. When diagnosed, you were also handed a death sentence par-excellence. The cancer had the power to embark on a relentless and insidious grand journey of destruction and the attendant eventful and definite painful death.

While chemotherapy serves the purpose of searching the blood stream to find cancer cells which are running amok to destroy them, radiotherapy is often used after surgery to focus high-energy beams in the affected area to stop any cancer cells dead in their tracks.

Those days, there were no methods to screen for breast cancer. More often than not, a patient found out when it was too late and the cancer had already gained ground, at a point of no return. But today, there are screening methods – to poke and probe to find abnormal growths in the breasts that require further investigations.

This is the best time to be alive. Unlike during my grandaunt’s days, we can be our own breast health advocates. On our own, we can do breast self-examinations. The breasts are ours and we must know them intimately. With self-breast knowledge, we can tell when any changes occur. These days, there is also mammogram, an x-ray of the breast which can show abnormal growths. In short, these days, we can save our breasts but best of all, we can save our lives and prevent breast cancer – if only it is diagnosed early, in a treatable form.

But if one is diagnosed a bit late and had to lose the breast, hope is not lost. Those days, when you lost your breast to cancer, you could only manage by arranging some odd fillers as a make-belief breast to prevent a flat chest and give the appearance of femininity. But these days, there are well-engineered well-shaped state-of-the-art artificial look-alike breasts that one could simply stick into a brazier to conceal a missing breast. Not bad at all for aesthetics.

But we only win through early diagnosis. Late diagnosis hands in the same ugly death sentence that breast cancer meted out to my grandaunt many yesteryears ago. That is unnecessary these days. Not for you; not for me; not for anyone.