October came and went (along with another clear check-up)…  yippee!  November is here and offering up great forward momentum for our family.  I tried to “do my part,” throughout the month with speaking engagements, guest blogging, and even appearing on the front page of the Herald with my ass kicking Dr. Wang.

Here is one the guest blog entries:

Aware of my Awareness

https://baptisthealth.net/breast-cancer-blog/aware-of-my-awareness/

“October is a perplexing time for me (and a lot of breast cancer patients and their loved ones).  It is a beautiful celebratory month for the countless advancements and hope it presents.  But it is also a sad, overwhelming, and often frustrating month of reminders, mixed messages, and profiteering.

Although I never wanted to be, I am the face of breast cancer.  I accept my responsibility with pride to now help others on their journey praying I can make a different for someone…somewhere.

I am a wife, mother, sister, aunt, friend, advocate, a wannabe writer and photographer, federal prosecutor of environmental crimes, and yes, I am a breast cancer survivor.

At a recent speaking engagement, I was asked to share why my story is different.  But the truth is, it isn’t.

And that it why it is so bad.  I was a 40 year old girl, living a dream life, who (thankfully) had a routine mammogram.  I sat in the waiting room that day with about 10 others “aware” of the statistics and though, though too personally and painfully “aware” of the cancer’s destructive path, I did not think it would happen to me.  I had no risk factors or family history. But I had breast cancer, and one of the most aggressive forms.

My story is your story – awareness only has meaning if we use it to stop the madness, stop this awful disease from taking us away.  My voice has to be loud enough to honor those who did not survive, to make it better for those who must endure, to advocate for better and earlier detection, more effective treatment, and maybe, just maybe, prevent it from happening at all.

Every decision, every cutting edge – controversial even – step WE (I say “we” because cancer is a family diagnosis) have taken from a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, to a prophylactic complete hysterectomy before I was ready to stop building our family, has been guided by my desire that my loved ones always be proud, and never have regret over steps I “might have” taken to be cured.

I choose to NOT “live in the pink” but I also choose to find the courage to tell the brutal truth and advocate so another mother doesn’t kiss her babies each night with the horror of not knowing whether she will see them grow up.

I hope my story is the stuff of your dreams for its hope, strength, and optimism…

but I also hope my story is the stuff of your nightmares for the reality and tragedy that breast cancer is to all of us.

I hope you will take your awareness and get that mammogram, listen to your body, and advocate for your future.  I hope OUR story is one of healthy cancer-free life.”

But the deafening sounds of breast cancer awareness month were silenced by the terrible news that a friend from high school lost his 10-year old daughter to brain cancer.   So horrific my limited mind cannot begin to process the possibility.  I learned from the Miller family and their very brave daughter that only 4% of all cancer research dollars goes to childhood cancer.  I was appalled, horrified, and so very sad.  I remember thinking the same thing when my father was sick with a very rare cancer: how unacceptable it was that the determination of whether enough research would be done to save lives boiled down to whether the drugs developed would be profitable.

Fast forward, how lucky I am to have gotten such a trendy cancer [said with intense eye rolling (though really I am)].  I mean I am thrilled so much money goes to breast cancer research though far too many women still die.

But if we aren’t going to save our kids, why bother saving ourselves?

So do me a favor, in Gabriella’s prophetic words, stop talking and start doing.

Check out their efforts at http://www.smashingwalnuts.org

Much love,

jodi alison