Author: The Beard Struggle
Published at: Jul 23, 2021
"Real Men Wear Pink = Men Fighting Breast Cancer "
Breast cancer affects everyone - women and men. It is important to raise awareness in the hopes of saving more lives in the fight against Breast cancer. You, or someone close to you is fighting, or has fought a battle with breast cancer. For example, every two minutes, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. Awareness means Save lives by ensuring that all people receive the care they need, and finding breakthroughs to prevent and cure breast cancer.
A breast cancer diagnosis can have a major impact on the whole family. A diagnosis can be a hard and emotionally draining time and it’s almost certain to affect every family member. If the person living with breast cancer is a mother of children living at home, the whole family unit will usually be stressed and/or strained.
Apart from skin cancers, breast cancer is the most common cancer type in women. In 2018:
The American Cancer Society estimates for breast cancer in men in the United States for 2018 are:
What does that mean, take a look at the table below:
|
Men |
Women |
Who is Affected |
|
1:1000 |
1:8 |
Everyone |
That means, One in Eight woman will be diagnosed and One in One Thousand men will be diagnosed with Breast cancer this year. Who does it affect? Everybody.
I want to share a story of a woman who I knew growing up. A woman who, when I, had nothing and no place to call home, took me in. This is a story of a woman named Elsie Theresa Robertson who lost the fight to Cancer back in 2013. Theresa (who I know as my Second Mother) was diagnosed with Breast cancer back in 2003. It started out as breast cancer in the left breast and she went in to chemo treatment and made the decision to just remove the whole breast. At that time, the doctors believed they got all of the malignant cancer cells and thought that the cancer was completely gone. However, approximately seven to eight months later, the cancer returned. This time it returned more aggressive than before in her right breast. During this time each person in the family, Elisa (Daughter), Chuckie (Son), and Husband (Bill), took turns driving her approximately one hour each way every day to her chemo appointments. Since she already had the left Breast removed during her previous fight with breast cancer, and didn't need the right breast she made the decision to have the second breast removed. Once again, the doctors were confident that they had removed all malignant cancer cells. Sadly, about a 6 months later the cancer showed up another way. This time it came back as aggressive bone cancer. From there it spread throughout her body in the bones. However, her doctors were dedicated. They amazingly, in the search for a cure, traveled all over the world looking for any new treatments that may have helped Theresa in her fight. To illustrate how dedicated and amazing these doctors were, one doctor even went as far as getting stuck in Iraq during 9/11 and had to sneak across the border through France to get back to the US with a new treatment. However, in April of 2013, Elsie Theresa Robertson (My second Mother) passed away from bone cancer.
The Struggle on the family can be even worse. The children of the Household turned to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism to the anguish and pain associated with Theresa’s struggle. This, led to a downward spiral, ultimately leading to incarceration for the two children. After Theresa’s passing Husband, Bill, basically gave up. After losing his love of his life and high school sweetheart and then the kids in jail and their habitual drug use from depression he just gave up. He passed away about 3 years later from basically a broken heart. In August 2016 he went to the hospital ER not feeling well. That night he went into respiratory arrest. The medical staff put him in an induced coma, when they tried to bring him or of it he wouldn't wake. He was on life support, he wanted to be with his wife, Elisa and Chuckie’s mother. Bill waited till all of the children were together and then he passed. The Doctors couldn't explain why.
The following day Chuckie was heading home to his wife and I had a serious car accident, obviously distracted by his father’s recent passing. He drove off a 12 ft ledge, and rolled his car over four times.
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