There is no escaping.

There is no escaping cancer in our society. Yesterday I got an email from a woman that I used to play hockey with. She had just been diagnosed with breast cancer herself. She is younger than I am. That makes 2 women we know who have been diagnosed since I have been. And that is only women we know...

You cannot pick up the paper, go to the grocery store or sign onto your computer without messages regarding cancer of some kind. New warnings, new studies or new products re-designed to increase our awareness and generate research funds. I recently received this in an email from our friend Kris. Apparently M&Ms are now available in a breast cancer awareness package. A check at the M&Ms corporate website finds that they are "Passionately Pink for the Cure." You can find their pink products and recipes at http://us.mms.com/us/news/promotions/komen/

Kitchen Aid has also gotten on board and invites you to "Cook for the Cure" with their line of pink appliances: http://kitchenaid.com/content.jsp?sectionId=457. I am not sure that I need a pink mixer but ok...I admire their attention to the cause. There is also this website called "Think Pink" offering everything adorned in pink ribbons that you can think of: http://thinkpink.homestead.com/Index.html. They even offer the plaid Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (you've all seen one of these...many of you probably own your own copy in red plaid) in pink.

Perhaps I am getting a bit tainted as my life has been filled with breast cancer since early February. If I am not reading about it or thinking about it, I am at an appointment related to it. More recently I have been napping as a result of it. But in the greater society, there is no escaping our attention to cancer in general.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am grateful that there has been the attention to breast cancer thus far. Because of the attention it has gotten, more is known about treatment giving me greater treatment options. That is all good. But if you are someone with cancer, short of closing your eyes and ears when you leave the house, there is no way to escape it for a moment.

About a week ago there was a letter to the editor in one of the local newspapers. It was from a woman who was a breast cancer survivor. I didn't think to clip the letter itself but I found her words interesting. Her point was that she had put her cancer into perspective within her life but society has created so much attention around cancer that she can not escape it. I suspect this will be true for me and all of us diagnosed in this time period. I know there will come a time in which I will truly be able to put this in my past but will the world around me allow it to remain there?