Thoughts on Breast Cancer Awareness Session: Before and After

This is a brief of the Breast Cancer Awareness session that was held within the company premises. It was a “women only” session, which as I realized later on; showed how much unaware (not just at an individual level but socially also) are we of the facts. People out there; its not just woman who can suffer from breast cancer, men too can; what if the chances are few and far-flung. I herein share a couple of thoughts and insights.

Let me start from myself. I am young, carefree, with a hectic (not stressful) life. I consider myself ok if not exactly the fit kinds. I do exercise (according to the availability of time); do not gorge on fast food or food in general. My favorite dishes include anything prepared by my mother and I get to eat them only once in six months when I’m at home. For the rest, I’m busy…working, traveling, thinking and meeting new people. I do not have unusually high levels of stress and am happy and contended for the most part of my life.

You must be wondering why I’m sharing this totally irrelevant info. Reason being when I received the mail for attending this session (It wasn’t mandatory) I thought of chucking out of it. One hour of time wasted for a doctor who would probably talk nonsense? (I’m amongst those people who feel time is best wasted in meetings) I could chat or surf the net, which seemed to be a better option. I was sure I couldn’t have cancer (I’m fit enough-see the reasons mentioned above) and if even I had cancer the doctor can hardly do anything more than giving me a few more days of painful life filled with tears medication and chemo. I would better die than live such a life. But then I attended it because of some silly reasons like

· My team members were all going and I had noone to talk to for all that while
· I had no work as such) reason given to me by my team)
· There was noone who was interesting enough to chat to…online
· I couldn’t think of anything else to do

As it turned out I was wrong on all the counts. Infact the very first thing that the doctor discussed was “It cannot be me” syndrome. Every day we hear of people dying out of cancer or otherwise and think; “Oh God it’s so bad, it happened to him/her.” But we never visualize ourselves dying out of cancer. Human mind is so funny that it tends to think only good. An eternal optimist will think, “I will be richer than Bill Gates”. A neutral one may think “ Oh I’m happy. Thoda hai thode ki zaroorat hai”. A pessimist will think “Oh I wish I had what Bill Gates has” But none of them will think of themselves as the victim of a road accident or cancer. Have u imagined yourself lying in the hospital bed with your juices flowing out of your skin? Or a part of ur body detached from you because it was cancer afflicted? No never. No matter how hard it might be but this realization will form ground of avoiding cancer, or at least some of its forms.

Fit enough. That was my second reason for not attending the session. But then I was wrong again. In every human body at any given point in time there are at least 15-20 abnormal cells that have the capability to grow out into a cancer. These cells are kept under a strict control by the body immunity. But then there is nothing as 100% fool proof, including the human body. So the fittest of the bodies can also have cancer. Other reasons have been included later.

The third thing that the doctor pointed out (and is closely related to the first one) is we are scared of finding ourselves as the victim to the disease. We wouldn’t go for a cancer check up because we are afraid “What if its there? I am sure to die.” Cancer is in most cases incurable. But not all. Breast cancer is easily detected and is curable. The cell division (I’m not sure if this is the case just with breast cancer or all types of cancers) is very slow. At the max one cell becomes two in 90 days. Two becomes four on the 180th day...so on and so forth. It’s pretty slow; if you consider the fact that a million cells (and nothing less than that) together constitute 1cm of cancerous growth, which in medical terminology is even before “Stage I”. If removed at this stage its fully curable without any chances of spreading to any other part of the body. Stage three or the last stage when the chances of saving a patient are less than 10% the growth is usually up to 5cms or more. So if found early it doesn’t necessarily means death. Ignorance isn’t bliss. It’s a sign of trouble hats waiting to blow up in future.

For the rest, the session comprised of the following (It wasn’t as boring as I had imagined it to be):

Reasons for Breast Cancer (these cannot be quoted as reasons because till date noone is sure as to what causes breast cancer but there is a high probability that people who are pretty much surrounded by any of the below mentioned are likely to suffer from it)

-Obesity
-Having kids after the age of 30 years
-No or very little breast feeding
-Hormonal imbalances and treatments (also includes excess intake of birth control pills)
-Stress


Avoiding Breast Cancer: This is a three-step process as underlined below

-Self examination; once a month for any lump; change in skin color or discharges from the nipple
-Mammography; recommended once a year (because of the long time the cells take to divide). It isn’t costly and total cost besides the doctor’s fee usually comes to Rs. 1000/- only. It isn’t that big an amount that cannot be spent in a year.
-Doctor’s examination in case of any kind of pain, change in skin colour, discharges or lumps. In case the cancer is detected at Stage I or before it does not require chemo or painful medication. Infact as the doctor pointed out most of such patients are treated as “out patients” whose tissue (and not breast) is removed and they can resume their normal lives from the next day.

Figures: In India the rate of woman suffering from breast cancer is very high. 2 out of every ten woman would be suffering from it. In the west due to increased awareness (in the ways mentioned above) and the timely assistance has reduced the number so much so that just 7 woman find themselves dying out of breast cancer every year on an average.


Miscellaneous: Cancer repeats itself, in case it has grown beyond 1 cm. This means that if at any point in your life you were operated for a cancerous growth that was in stage II or stage III, please keep a strict check for the first 5 years. After that the chances of repetition reduce if they do not die out totally.

Footnotes: There was some literature and notes (in the form of a movie) that the doctor shared with us. She is a Cancer Specialist from Apollo Hospital and I have her contact details. For those of you who need this information please get in touch with me at divyaawasthi1@gmail.com