Today I am sad, today i'm devastated, today... I logged into my facebook account after a long time and I saw a post someone made about losing a woman he knew to breast cancer. He posted photos of everything, the woman was also nine months pregnant. She did not turn to orthodox medicine because she and her family believed that it was an illness that could only be cured traditionally with herbs and all that, i'm sure they did not know what breast cancer was, either that or they just believed blindly in their traditional medications. I would not be posting the photo of the woman because it might be too graphic. The whole story really got to me on a whole different level, the images were something else and I could not even imagine the pain that woman had been through and for how long. I also read that at some point she began to bleed profusely after she visited the traditional doctor who was taking care of her and they tried to take out what was in her breast with a syringe!
Ignorance is no longer acceptable, ignorance is no longer blissful! In this world that we live in one cannot afford to be ignorant because it could cost not just you but people around you their lives. The author of the facebook post mentioned that he had not known about her predicament until it was in it's final stages and even then he tried to get her to come to the hospital with her husband but she did not. The woman had not confided in him way earlier because she felt like it was not a problem she could share with him seeing as he was only friends with her late younger brother and she was a married woman. If only he had known in the early stages, if only she had told him about what she was passing through maybe, just maybe she would still be alive today. You don't need a degree or formal education to stay healthy and take care of yourself, you just need to stay well informed.
This had me thinking how things like this could be avoided if only people were more educated on what breast cancer is or cancer in general and how if detected earlier could be treated. People need to begin to understand that when it comes to health issues there should be no such thing as "i'm too embarrassed" or "you are female/male so I can't talk to you about it" or "it's probably nothing", rather ask questions, google, talk to someone and go to the hospital to do a check up! Don't say "it's nothing" because all the most dangerous illnesses in the world start small, probably with a small headache or dizziness so don't ever shrug it off as "nothing", it's always something.
We all need to stay well informed and keep the people around us well informed too, you can't say "i'm not female, breast cancer does not matter to me" because that's not true. We all either have a sister or a mother or an aunt or a friend or at least one female in our lives that we care about plus men can also have breast cancer. ** Information is power, knowledge is power**, being well informed can change a lot of things for us and can help us avoid certain tragic situations.
I believe the internet is accessible even in most villages today so it's easier to spread the awareness of these things. Tell your family, educate them. Study shows that one in every eight women could possibly be diagnosed with breast cancer. Let us all spread the word and save a life. It's not breast cancer awareness month but it sure as well could be because i'm sure there couldn't be a wrong time to spread the awareness. We definetly don't want anyone we know or even those we don't to lose their lives through such pain as the woman from the facebook post did due to lack of proper information so please, stay healthy, stay informed and spread the word.
For more information and all you need to know about breast cancer please visit: http://www.breastcancer.org. Thank you for reading.
