The tyranny of pink - Breast cancer - Salon.com

via www.salon.com

This latest article (click on the link above to read it, and PLEASE read it) in Salon.com voices many of my own frustrated and angry thoughts, which I've had ever since the beginnings of this PINK nonsense got so stupidly out of hand. It's just another "dumbing down" of a complex, COMPLEX subject that deserves and demands and REQUIRES so much more than these idiotic pink getups and pink ribbons and pink consumer crap. Once again, it's the mass "herd" reality. Everybody jumps on the big pink bandwagon, holds up signs, runs in a pack, and thinks (more like hopes or believes than thinks) that this money that gets raised is actually going to make a significant difference. Well, it isn't. What will make a difference is women REALLY learning about why treatments for breast cancer are so slow to change, why they aren't working for the most part, why the research and treatment paradigms must be radically altered.

But most people don't have the time or energy to go that far (or at least they think they don't). It's easier to just join in by wearing pink, going to a park and chanting, or running in a race. All of this is relatively mindless.

Over here at my house, I'm more concerned about why a certain Italian doctor's work combining low dose chemo and  immunotherapy (using Interleukin 2 and a drug commonly used to treat acne, which are both relatively inexpensive compared to most other immunotherapy treatments that are being oh so very slowly researched) has yet to be put into practice here in the United States, even though he has been doing it for over ten years in Italy, with some amazing results for women who have STAGE FOUR breast cancer (that would be me).

I would rather see women creating a huge campaign that asks the question: Why aren't we getting access to this already-existing treatment, and having it covered by health insurance? WE NEED TO BE LOUDLY ASKING MORE QUESTIONS, VERY SPECIFIC QUESTIONS, USING MORE INTELLECT AND LESS RAH RAH SIS BOOM BAH SLOGANS.

I was on the phone yesterday afternoon with my oncologist, trying to get him to let me be a guinea pig for him. I'm basically begging him to learn about Dr. Recchia's treatment protocol, which is REALLY simple, something I can do at home, and to help me get the damn drugs. They exist. All I have to is combine them and take them along with my low-dose chemo. If I do, there is a very good chance that I could almost DOUBLE my chances of surviving ten or more years (by double, I mean my chances would very possibly rise from approximately 25 percent to 43 percent).

Of course, if I can get him to agree to this (he's seriously considering it, and I bless him for that, because right now the vast majority of oncologists in the U.S. will not consider it; that's right, they will not even consider it), I will have to come up with somewhere between $300 and $500 per WEEK, to pay for it out of pocket. That's relatively cheap in the big picture of what cancer treatments normally cost if not covered by insurance, but for ME? Huge. I don't know how I will come up with the money. But I will try. And I know that if I can scrape it up, it will be due to my own efforts, not from anything related to all this PINK crap. No way. And that makes me both mad and sad, for myself and for thousands of other women in my position.

My slogan: FORGET PINK - JUST THINK

Comments

[Jane Underwood]

I'd recommend donating to breastcancerchoices.org.

[Lynne]

Komen has created an idiotic monster. Their culture and ideas won't go away and they get worse every year. They are the Donald Trumps of breast cancer.

[mary ann]

fascinating ~ I used to be a pink supporter, but no more, never again. But I'd like an alternative, some place to send $$$ for true research. Where?