No to "No Bra Day"

Apparently there's an ignorant movement to consider October 13 to be a No Bra Day... " in support of breast cancer."
 https://www.facebook.com/957kjr

Actually it's not a good idea to flaunt one's breasts while also trying to be supportive of women who have died of breast cancer or who may have lost both breasts to cancer.

See these blog posts by a woman who was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer at age 34.

http://cancerinmythirties.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/national-no-bra-day-and-breast-cancer-awareness-month-or-please-put-that-pink-can-of-soup-down-put-your-bra-back-on/

http://cancerinmythirties.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/national-no-bra-day-an-update/

She says:  you should think twice before you publicize a day that jokes about putting the first body parts we usually lose to this disease “out there” on display even more conspicuously and then labeling it as an activity that helps our ’cause’.

Below is one of the offending ads... men love it.  

Thanks to my daughter, Roz Arthur Eggebroten, who advised me to take this "no bra day" with a grain of salt.  (As an aging '60s person, I tend to be in favor of no-bra days.)  She said there were a bunch of t-shirts with offensive messages like this a few years ago.

The Cancer in My Thirties blog also notes the "pinkification" of breast cancer-- she says it trivializes the disease and its seriousness, makes it pink and cutesy, sells a lot of products, and probably reduces the donations that could actually go to breast cancer research.

Fainting couches

I'm not getting enough compassion from my husband as I near the final stretch of my daily radiation for breast cancer.

My big mistake was declining his offer to drive me to the treatments.

Because he's retired and gets up at noon, and my treatments are at 9 am, I said, "No, you don't have to drive me.  I can find a parking place and go in myself.  It only takes fifteen minutes to go in, change to a hospital gown, get the radiation, get dressed again, and leave.  It would be nice to be dropped off and picked up, but you don't have to do that."

Being tough and independent is my usual pattern.  Maintaining a stiff upper lip worked for a few weeks, but now I'm actually tired as a result of radiation and not taking time for an afternoon nap.  

I forgot to communicate the change in status to my husband.  He hasn't asked, "How are you feeling?"

I haven't sat him down and said, "Look, this radiation is getting to me.  I need some support." 

Instead, I've gotten irritable and he has continued to yell at me whenever he feels like it--for example, when I turned on the dryer with his wet clothes in it, but he didn't want them dried.

The solution: a fainting couch.  

I found these couches mentioned in the preface to a new book by Susan Campbell, Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker, and I took the hint.

Turns out they are for sale at Macy's and everywhere else on the internet.

Today I took a big dramatic nap in the bedroom, but tomorrow I'm ordering one of these plush red fainting couches and having it moved into our living room.

I can't say there's been any change yet, but here's hoping.

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Fainting couch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fainting_couch

Wikipedia

A fainting couch is a couch with a back that is traditionally raised at one end. The back may be situated completely at one side of the couch, or may wrap around ...

Fainting room - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fainting_room

Wikipedia

A fainting room was a private room, of which its main features/furniture werefainting couches, used during the Victorian era, to make women more comfortable  ...

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Day 19 of Radiation

Sheesh!  Enough already.

I still have four more days of radiation to go... 

At this point my left breast is a sad puppy: bright pink and droopy and tender.  When I brush against or bump into something, it reminds me of being  a nursing mother and having to drive home from a days's work with tender cement blocks on my front, overfilled with milk.

I want to tell the radiation folks, "Thanks---this will be enough for me." 

Oh well, I guess dropping out is not allowed.

My energy level is low but I keep bumbling around trying to do things instead of just resting.  As a result, things take longer and the choices I make are not as good.  Short circuits in the frontal temporal lobe.

The good news: I hope to start the drive to Colorado on Aug. 1.

Also on that day I start taking Arimidex, one a day for the next five years.

Yippee, I'm on The Pill again.  Not.

At least I don't have to do chemo therapy. 

Radiation, Day 14

Today I completed my 14th radiation treatment.

I lay down on the narrow white table while the three-foot wide screen with its high-pitched hum added a zzzzzzzz in about middle E and aimed invisible rays at my left breast.

It moved across me from right to left and continued to buzz at me from the lower left, aimed at my armpit and the left side of my breast.

That's what the treatment is like every day; I will have a total of 23 of those expensive treatments (covered by Medicare).

Then three male technicians did some talking and measuring to prepare for the seven booster treatments that will begin next Wednesday.  Dr. McCloskey came in and checked on whether they had the right location.  

With her okay, they drew an large oval on my left breast and then took a photo of it.

I changed from hospital gown into my clothes and left.  

In a good mood, I decided to sit on the patio and check my cell phone while waiting to see if my car's oil change was completed.  

Because I was outside when I made that decision, I had to step over a couple of four-inch edgings to get to the patio.  (From inside, I could simply have opened a door to the area.)

Looking toward the patio, but not at my feet (one of which is wearing a huge black soft cast), I stumbled on one of the little edgings and nearly fell.

No big deal, right?  But it was the same kind of stumble that had put me in that cast for the past two months.  Realizing that I had done it again--I had not learned my lesson--caused me to burst into tears.  I sat on the patio and cried.

At home, I took off my shirt and stared at my left breast: pinker than the right, tender, slightly swollen.  Also the underarm area (near where two lymph nodes had been removed) showed a rectangular pink imprint.

For the first ten treatments, the zapped breast had not showed much difference from the other one.  Now the radiation is finally having a visible effect.

Of course, the scar from the lumpectomy is still red--a dramatic little unhappy smile.  At least it's no longer looking infected.  There's still a small red spot where the biopsy needle entered in April.  The incision in the underarm has faded to a pale thin line. 

I squeezed some Miaderm radiation relief cream out of the tube and gently soothed it onto the whole left breast.

14 down, 9 to go.

Dense tissue--dense issue

Have you ever been told you have dense breast tissue?

If so, an annual mammogram is not a very effective way of finding out whether you have a small tumor.  

Your report can come back stamped "Normal"--no signs of any cancer.

But that white stuff that fills part of your x-ray can be masking a tumor.

An ultrasound is a much better way of finding a small cancer, perhaps before you can feel a lump.

My mammogram last March was rated negative--no cancer.  

But some guardian angel in the medical world recommended a follow-up ultrasound, and in that image the tumor popped up on the screen dramatically.  

Both the technician and I could see it.  The only question was whether it was benign or malignant, and a biopsy answered that question.  Yep, cancer.

Half of all women have dense breast tissue, but the issue of whether we should get a follow-up ultrasound comes down to money.

There's been a lot of debate over whether insurance companies should cover ultrasound for us.  After all, many of those ultrasounds will not reveal a tumor.   Many of the follow-up biopsies will show the tumor to be either pre-cancerous or not cancer at all.

When one type of screening suggests further follow-up, and that follow-up shows that there is no problem, the first screening is considered to be a "false positive."  In other words, insurance companies wish they hadn't paid for the follow-up.  It wasn't needed, in their view.

In my view, a follow-up that says I do not have cancer is just as important as a follow-up that is positive for cancer.  The first one saves my peace of mind, the second one saves my life.  

Insurance companies, of course, want to do fewer mammograms and ultrasounds. 

Women don't need to start annual mammograms at age 40, some are saying.  Starting at age 50 is better.  Not many cancers are found between ages 40-50.  

Another suggestion is that women over 50 only get a mammogram every other year.

Insurance companies are interested in saving money, not saving lives.

Ten years ago I was told that I have dense breast tissue and that I needed a follow-up MRI after my mammogram.  

I did it.  The result was negative--no tumor.  My health insurance company didn't want to pay for that MRI, but they finally did.

When the doctor recommended a follow-up ultrasound this year, I was worried about the cost.

"Will insurance pay for it?" I asked.

"Yes," they said.  I made the appointment, the cancer was found, and treatment began.

In both cases the message was just "Dense breast tissue... follow-up recommended."

If not for that ultrasound, my cancer would be growing this summer from stage 1 to stage 2 or 3.  

I'd be going in for my mammogram in March, 2015, and getting bad news.  

Radiation and sadness

These days when you get radiation for breast cancer, you fill out a form weekly to monitor changes in your breast, your skin on the breast, your tiredness, and your moods.

I don't understand why I have to report any feelings of sadness, depression, lethargy.

Hey, I have cancer, right?  So of course it's going to get to me at times.

I also don't understand whether my feelings are caused by radiation and cancer or by a host of other things.  Filling out this form doesn't measure what's happening in your life and in the world besides radiation.

After all, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and had been missing since June 12.  They had been hitchhiking home from a religious school, Shavei Hevron yeshiva. 

Their bodies were found on June 30, and their funeral was on July 1.  Israel had already started bombing Gaza and Palestinian cities.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/world/middleeast/Israel-missing-teenagers.html

I had been crying about the sadness of the abduction, on the weekend before my first radiation treatment, June 30.  I filled out the form on July 1 saying that yes, I had been sad.  I had been crying.  I marked it "mild."

Then on July 2 a Palestinian teen was abducted from his home and murdered.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/meast/israel-palestinian-teen-death-indictment/

As the month continues, Israel has been bombing Gaza increasingly.  Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel.  On Wednesday July 16, Isareli rockets killed four little kids playing soccer on the beach in Gaza.  

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middle-east/2014/07/16/four-young-boys-killed-playing-gaza-beach/Lxrn3OaifRIw4RFfyj8KZP/story.html

And UCLA still wants to know if I have been sad in the past week, on a scale of 1 to 5.

While reeling from the deaths in Israeli and Palestine, we started some home construction on July 1.  Half of our living room furniture is now in our small kitchen; the other half is covered with plastic in a corner of the empty living room.  We can't enter our front door because a sheet of plastic hangs between the chimney area and the rest of the house.  

Instead we walk past the demolished chimney to the back door, past several ineffective levels of fencing to try to keep the dogs in the yard.  The bigger dog keeps getting out; one day I had to pick her up from the pound and pay $46.  

Along with the radiation and the grim international news and the home construction, I'm wearing a soft cast for a fracture of a bone spur on my left heel.  (On May 5 I stumbled over a cement block marking a parking space in a garage--while on my way to buy a book on breast cancer.)  That injury hasn't healed, may need surgery.

So on Tuesday I looked at the question about sadness during my radiation and marked it not "mild" but "occasional."

I guess radiation is going to get credit for my sadness because there was no space to note that most of it is based on discouraging events, both international and at home.