Cure Cancer Now

Our childhood days are filled with playing, eating, talking about more playing, and enjoying things that we like to do.  None of us grasp the concept of time in our youth.  As we age, time becomes more valuable to us and we understand the concept of time slightly better.
For those who must endure cancer though, the concept of time is wholly realized.  For us, time is a crash course lesson in living and dying.  A cancer patient doesn’t know if there will be a tomorrow, and the future is uncertain in a way that the average person doesn’t comprehend. 
A major cancer charity was founded over 100 years ago with the promise that the organization would cease once a cure for cancer was found.  A century ago, and there’s still no cancer cure!  How many people do you suppose have died of cancer during that hundred years?  How many people have mourned the loss of a loved one?  How many tears have been shed?
Each year, there are galas and events to raise money to cure cancer.  There are research foundations, each independent from the other; and they all cry for more money.  I’ve personally seen pink ribbon cakes in October for breast cancer awareness; and major corporations are now involved in the war on cancer because it’s chic and lucrative to support cancer awareness.
And still, there’s no cure for cancer!
A friend died of cancer in 1992.  Just before his death, he told me that he’d “hung on” to life because he believed that there will be a cure in his lifetime.  That was over 30 years ago.
Isn’t it time to end cancer now?  Please make your friends and neighbors aware that we have a war and cancer is the enemy.

The Neighbor Lady

I was raised in the 1950’s.  Our neighbor lady was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was about 8, and the talks of her bilateral mastectomy were in hushed tones.  She had a bilateral mastectomy because that’s what they did back then, and her scar ran horizontally across her entire chest.  It was scary to me as a small child although I didn’t understand any of it; but I knew that the neighbor lady’s huge scar was something that fed young children’s nightmares---and no doubt, it fed her nightmares too.
The neighbor lady went on to live a long life with that horrible, unsightly scar and she never faced breast cancer again.  And medical science has advanced measurably since then.  No one speaks of breast cancer in whispers anymore and just about everyone is a breast cancer advocate today.  Now we have lumpectomies and sentinel node testing.  We do testing to see if we carry a particular gene.
So now it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2013.  And why, despite all the money spent on breast cancer awareness and breast cancer research, aren’t we making more progress in the war against breast cancer?  Why?  Ask yourself.  Ask your neighbor.  Ask your doctor.  Tell him to ask his pharma company?  Ask your representative.
Why?