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Things that are not not comforting...when the big machine giving you radiation breaks while you are in the middle of being irradiated. I ended up feeling more sorry for the techs than myself as they got more and more apologetic (and frustrated) as we waited, and waited, and then waited some more for it to be fixed, and eventually they took me down off the table to wait since it's bad form to leave your patient with their arms awkwardly stretched above the head and unable to move for that long. Especially since one of the arms is all wonky and whatnot.
A cup of coffee and several magazines later, it was back on the table to finish up my zaps and I am home now.
The kid and my mom flew home this morning as well. Sad to see them go, but it was a good visit, and we drove up to see my brother and nephews on Sunday as well so there was baby cuddling. It continues to be strange that, since I had Nathan so young, my kid is approaching college while my brothers and most of the people I know my around my age have just now started having kids in the last few years, so they are all mostly under the age of five. Makes me feel older than I actually am sometimes.
Breast cancer awareness month is almost over and I feel like I should say something, but the something I'd say would mostly be angry at the whole thing...The pink teddy bear infantilization of women. The 'save the boobie' type campaigns which, while I enjoy the irreverent humor in small doses, have become so prevalent as to shift the focus from 'saving the lives of women who are whole people' to the 'breast' part of breast cancer, and in quantity become insulting and hurtful not just to those of us who've had mastectomies and don't, y'know, have breasts anymore, but also to any woman left with scarred and altered breasts post-treatment (hint: ALL OF US, OKAY? PERFECT JIGGLY BOOBS ARE THE LEAST OF OUR WORRIES). And then there's the corporate money grab wrapped in pink ribbons on fucking everything in which most of the money goes straight into the pockets of said corporations and hardly any of it makes it to anything to do with breast cancer, and what little does goes mostly to 'awareness' and event planning and not actual research. Or how 'awareness' skips right over women of color and young women who are three times more likely to die if diagnosed with breast cancer, but whose risk factors and screening options are not the same as they are for older white women (hint: yearly mammograms after 40? Not particularly useful advice) and have the least amount of research devoted to them. Or the 'rah rah SURVIVOR' aspects, which shove metastatic women and their concerns and lives into a single day of awareness for the whole month, lest we be reminded of the realities of stage IV (TOO DEPRESSING, exceptions made for women who've had the common decency to go ahead and die so they can be remembered in an inspirationally blurry haze of crocodile tears and pink glitter sprinkled posters). Um, I guess I did say something. I HAVE ISSUES Y'ALL.
*goes to start a bonfire of pink fucking ribbons*
A cup of coffee and several magazines later, it was back on the table to finish up my zaps and I am home now.
The kid and my mom flew home this morning as well. Sad to see them go, but it was a good visit, and we drove up to see my brother and nephews on Sunday as well so there was baby cuddling. It continues to be strange that, since I had Nathan so young, my kid is approaching college while my brothers and most of the people I know my around my age have just now started having kids in the last few years, so they are all mostly under the age of five. Makes me feel older than I actually am sometimes.
Breast cancer awareness month is almost over and I feel like I should say something, but the something I'd say would mostly be angry at the whole thing...The pink teddy bear infantilization of women. The 'save the boobie' type campaigns which, while I enjoy the irreverent humor in small doses, have become so prevalent as to shift the focus from 'saving the lives of women who are whole people' to the 'breast' part of breast cancer, and in quantity become insulting and hurtful not just to those of us who've had mastectomies and don't, y'know, have breasts anymore, but also to any woman left with scarred and altered breasts post-treatment (hint: ALL OF US, OKAY? PERFECT JIGGLY BOOBS ARE THE LEAST OF OUR WORRIES). And then there's the corporate money grab wrapped in pink ribbons on fucking everything in which most of the money goes straight into the pockets of said corporations and hardly any of it makes it to anything to do with breast cancer, and what little does goes mostly to 'awareness' and event planning and not actual research. Or how 'awareness' skips right over women of color and young women who are three times more likely to die if diagnosed with breast cancer, but whose risk factors and screening options are not the same as they are for older white women (hint: yearly mammograms after 40? Not particularly useful advice) and have the least amount of research devoted to them. Or the 'rah rah SURVIVOR' aspects, which shove metastatic women and their concerns and lives into a single day of awareness for the whole month, lest we be reminded of the realities of stage IV (TOO DEPRESSING, exceptions made for women who've had the common decency to go ahead and die so they can be remembered in an inspirationally blurry haze of crocodile tears and pink glitter sprinkled posters). Um, I guess I did say something. I HAVE ISSUES Y'ALL.
*goes to start a bonfire of pink fucking ribbons*