Anticancer Amy: November 2011

I’m catching up on emails and come across Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s blog entry on breast cancer awareness month. Dr. Fuhrman is a family physician specializing in nutritional medicine. He has been an active leader in the movement to educate the public on nutrition (a.k.a. vegetable-based diet) and healing disease.

As you can see from this blurb, he feels strongly that breast cancer awareness month is for the birds.

He says, “Hysterical wasn’t it that Southern Cancer Fried Chicken was selling pink buckets of the cancer-causing (junk food fried) chicken to raise money for breast cancer awareness? A skull and crossbones on the chicken bucket would have made more sense than a pink ribbon, but what do I know? I am sure next year we will see a pink Big Mac with a ribbon around it, and we will be encouraged to drink Pepsi for breast cancer awareness. I say let’s have some pink-ribboned cigarettes, and whiskey in pink bottles, too. I wonder if the cocaine pushers will get in on the act. Why not? Maybe even we can get the lawn service technicians that spray toxic weed killer on the neighbor’s lawn to dress in pink.”

Wow, he is frustrated! You can read its entirety at http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/breast-cancer-october-was-breast-cancer-awareness-month-didnt-you-hear.html

After reading Dr. Fuhrman’s blog, I asked my children, ages 9, 6 and 6 what they understood breast cancer month to be. My oldest said October was about raising money for breast cancer. When I asked her what cancer is, she said “it’s when you eat wrong”. My mouth winced. Hmmm….. I thought. Is this all I want her know about cancer because I certainly don’t believe that the definition of cancer is when you eat wrong. I sat down with my kids and had a ‘kid-style’ reminder of what cancer is. You may or may not agree with my approach because I am concrete and speak openly with my children. This is what I told them 3 years ago and what I will continue to tell them until they are older:

Everyone’s body is made of cells, lots of them. Cells are small circles that you can only see under a microscope. All cells have jobs, and cells work hard at their jobs every day to make our body work. Sometimes cells lose their job (they become unemployed!). They can move into a part of your body and cause trouble. They might try to get other cells to join them; if this happens they become a group (like a party). The group can grow slowly or fast. When the group gets to a big size, it is called a lump or a mass. If the lump is really sick (it doesn’t want a good job anymore) and tries to stop your body parts from working properly, this is cancer. Mommy had breast cancer, so I had a party of cells in my breast that were all unemployed! (they think this is really funny)

We then discussed some of the things that can put your body at risk for getting cancer. Things like smoking, eating the wrong foods, lack of exercise, breathing harmful air and stress. And for those of you out there who smoke, my kids frequently come home and tell me “mommy, _______ had smokes”. They are watching……! I have told my kids that the chemotherapy, surgeries and radiation killed my breast cancer; however, mommy has to live a healthful life to keep the cancer away. And if mommy tries to live healthfully, the whole family has to tryJ. My oldest also understands that people can die from cancer. You might think this is sad…. having to discuss cancer with children. I think it empowers them and has helped with our healing. There are some great resources out there on educating kids on cancer. One of these days I will get working on my resource list to share with you. In the meantime, you can find some good tools on http://kidskonnected.org/.

Breast cancer awareness month can be interpreted so many ways. For the Waltz Family, we will continue to participate in fundraising to promote wellness, healing, prevention, education and treatment.

I thought you would enjoy seeing our ribbons, Butterfly Kisses and Waltz Warriors and some of the places they toured on the Pink Ribbon Parade.