Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Taylor Diehl, Freshman

In the United States, over 325,010 women a year struggle for their lives while fighting against a deadly, uncontrollable disease. The month of October is dedicated to spreading awareness to those who deserve it while fighting for their lives. Cancer is an uncontrollable disease that is caused by a division of abnormal cells in the body, which can also lead to growing tumors or other unnatural things in your body. The most common type of cancer that women face is breast cancer, and there are two different types of breast cancer. When you develop breast cancer, malignant cells begin to form in the tissue of the breast, which leads to needing different treatments to attempt to correct cancer before it gets worse. In America, 1 out of 8 women are known to get diagnosed with cancer at any point throughout their lifetime.

Breast cancer has two extreme forms: invasive and noninvasive. If you have invasive breast cancer, that means that cancer has spread to other parts of the tissue that surrounds. This is known to be very serious and many women can’t overcome this type of cancer. When having noninvasive breast cancer, it stays in the original place that it had formed and does not go into any extra tissue or other places. These are both very serious and have a survival rate of 5-10 years depending on treatment choice.

Photo Courtesy of: “feea.org”

For the year 2020, it is expected that a total of 276,480 women will face invasive breast cancer, while 48,530 will encounter noninvasive cancer. With all of that being noted, it is estimated that 42,170 of those women will pass away from cancer. Currently, there are over 3.5 million breast cancer survivors just in the United States.

While being very rare, men can also be diagnosed with breast cancer. This year it is expected that around 2,620 men will get diagnosed and 520 will die from it. In order to spread awareness on what breast cancer patients experience, the month of October was dedicated to learning more to help support people and educate unaffected people. Breast Cancer Awareness month was established in 1985 to show support and raise money for medical needs, like treatment or diagnoses. It was originally started as a partnership between the American Cancer Society and the Pharmaceutical Division of Imperial Chemical Industries. This was started by a cancer survivor herself, Betty Ford. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, her husband, Gerald Ford, was president of the United States. This helped spread more awareness to more people through more supporters. While October is here, breast cancer survivors and patients are heavily encouraged to share their stories about everything they have gone through, celebrate each other, and praise their recovery. In 1992, a nationwide celebration was started where Estée Lauder cosmetics made over 1.5 million pink ribbons to give away to remind others about the challenges that cancer survivors and patients are facing. To this day, the pink ribbons are still one of the most popular and shared things to spread awareness, as even NFL teams can be seen wearing pink ribbons to show their support during their games.

Works Cited

“Breast Cancer - Statistics.” Cancer.Net, 13 Aug. 2020, www.cancer.net/cancer-types/breast-cancer/statistics#:~:text=More women are diagnosed with,(in situ) breast cancer.

“Breast Cancer Facts.” National Breast Cancer Foundation, 26 Aug. 2020, www.nationalbreastcancer.org/breast-cancer-facts.

“A Brief History of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.” Brevard Health Alliance, 8 Nov. 2019, www.bhachc.org/a-brief-history-of-breast-cancer-awareness-month/#:~:text=Breast Cancer Awareness Month began,a survivor of breast cancer.