Breast Cancer Awareness Month is drawing to a close. I’m a bit sad that I couldn’t participate more in it, but that’s what your last month of uni will do for you.

There is one last photo contest for this month and the word is bra.

Taken at the pink ribbon brunch I went to.

Please take care of yourselves and don’t find yourself having to pad your bra one day!

On Sunday I went to a Pink Ribbon Brunch with my mum. It was hosted by Amanda Atkinson, whose mother Judith was treated for Breast Cancer earlier this year.

Judith & Amanda

Pink cupcakes

Pink sugared glasses

Pink bras

I didn’t know anyone there (except Mum of course), but it was a really lovely morning. Mum was able to talk to some people about how having breast cancer has affected her and how it built her relationship with God. I also shared a bit about how it affected me (not as positively as mum in the short term, but I certainly learnt things).

There was a raffle, a marshmallow guessing competition, and a game of grabbing as many pegs off the line as you can — all to raise money for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Marshmallow guessing prize

Raffle prize

Peg grabbing

Mum trying the peg game

Watching the peg grabbing

Although her web page doesn’t reflect it yet, I think Amanda has raised about $1200 dollars.

Judith told me that if it weren’t for an effort in the Hunter area to get women to have mammograms, she may not have known that she had breast cancer until it was much worse. I hope that the money raised this month is useful for research and application of treatments and early detection methods.

Thanks Amanda and Judith for the excellent morning!

Mum & me

Crocheted boobs (& dinks) with illustrated instructions to help check for and prevent cancer

Yes, I mentioned them last year, but they’re worth another mention!

Crocheted pieces of our anatomy that come with an illustrated book to teach you how to properly check for breast tumors (or testicular for the guys). This is the gift that says you care! Seriously… The illustrations in the book are really nice and what else says that you care than “Please take care of yourself, I don’t want you to die from cancer.”?

A few links to people who are thinking pink.

• Should You Shop Pink This October? — is buying pink stuff the best way to use your money?
• Dawn @ Coming to a Nursery Near You — the right response to pink, be inspired to make an appointment with your doctor!
• Jack Martin Leith — men get breast cancer too don’t forget to support them

You can read more personal stories on the Pink for October website too.

As I made my way around the University of New South Wales last Monday night I noticed that things were a little pinker than usual.

UNSW Pink for October 'Global Illumination'

Some people feel fairly cynical about Breast Cancer Awareness month, and possibly rightly so with all the hundreds of causes around us and all the times we’re asked to donate money. What on earth does “Breast Cancer Awareness” mean anyway? Who hasn’t heard of breast cancer? A lot of money is raised for the more obvious things — research into treatments for breast cancer — during this month, but awareness in itself is an important thing.

I recently wrote this in response to a very good post questioning pink,

I’m sure almost everyone has heard of it and know that it exists, but how many women don’t know how to check their breasts properly? How many women get proper women’s health check-ups from their doctor? How many people don’t know that the risk of getting breast cancer increases with increased alcohol consumption and with being overweight?

It’s not supposed to be about going around saying “Hey, 1 in 8 women get breast cancer!” It’s about saying, “Look, 1 in 8 women are likely to get breast cancer. Here’s what you can do to try to prevent it, or have it detected early to make your chances of survival much higher.”

Check out the Pink for October website for more articles and sites that are going pink.

It’s the 1^st of October. Accordingly, I have made my blog a little pinker! The purpose of the pink this month is to raise awareness of breast cancer related issues, encourage support for research, and support breast cancer patients and their families.

For the start of this pink month cast your peepers over some of the things I posted last year.

• Mum’s Story — Mum shared her experience of breast cancer with us
• Seven year old memories — my own memories from when Mum had breast cancer.
• A Pocket Full of Sequins — this book of personal stories is still available from the National Breast Cancer Foundation
• Cancer is what now? — the biologists attempt to explain what cancer actually is for you!
• Lymphodema: not “all over” — Mum talks about one of the complications of breast tumor removal surgery

My mum and cousin (May 2008)

Check out the Pink for October website for articles, personal accounts, joining the effort and donating to good causes!

I know that there are a lot of causes out there. There’s a lot of horrible things in our world. If you don’t feel compelled to give money to breast cancer research, I understand. There’s a lot of scientific research going on into a whole lot of things and it’s pretty hard to consider one type of health (or mal-health) more important than another. However, please do take this opportunity to think about the disease and how it affects people and everyone connected with the people who get it. Spare a thought or prayer for them and what you might be able to do to help.

Thanks!

Well, here we are! The end of October, the end of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the end of Pink for October and Halloween (not that it has to do with anything really).

In the aid of breast cancer awareness

Over the course of the month I’ve written about:

• Mum’s story of breast cancer
• Baking for breast cancer awareness
• My memories
• Pocketful of Sequins, a book for breast cancer awareness
• Crafts for breast cancer awareness
• What cancer is and why your hair falls out
• Pink Ribbon Day
• Lymphoedema

Until this month I had never seen pelf-ism is contagious; there were some excellent posts about breast cancer that you may want to read.

I also though the information accompanying the Breast Cancer Risk Calculator was excellent. Simple things, for example your risk increases with age, with weight, drinking alcohol… and don’t forget men are at risk too! They also have a section about understanding risk and dispelling statistical myths or misconceptions.

People or the environment, world hunger, poverty or health

Ever since I read this post by The Foo I’ve been meaning to make a comment on it here. I don’t share all of his frustration over a lack of action, or a lack of information and awareness appearing to be a lack of action. It’s probably because I’m studying molecular biology, so I hear about up-and-coming cancer research all the time. However I have often pondered how we should pick our battles, how we can choose our causes, because we surely can’t actively support them all.

I don’t have answers, only some thoughts on how we can weigh these things up.

Our health

In my post about what cancer is I wrote a bit about what genes and proteins are. Mutation of genes and dysfunction of proteins causes many different diseases, including different cancers. So, to go from not having cancer to having cancer there needs to be a mutation along the way. Sometimes these mutations are just a mistake, an unfortunate, yet (in a way) normal part of how things function. However some mutations are induced by “mutagens” or “carcinogens”. Basically, things that cause mutations or that cause cancer.

Some of those things we can’t reasonably avoid, for example sunlight. UV rays from the sun can cause mutations of DNA in the lower cells of our skin (basal cell carcinomas, melanomas etc). However, we can reduce our exposure to the sun and we can reduce our exposure to many other factors. This website has some brief points on how to deal with household chemical usage and other lifestyle risk factors for breast (and other) cancer.

Our environment

I’m not suggesting that all cancers are induced by the way we live, however it is something to think about. The more we pollute our earth the more likelihood that we will come in contact with things that we carelessly discarded in our bins or down our drains. Things we never imagined are making it inside our bodies through food, drinking water, swimming water and air.

The things that we discard may not even be the biggest contribution to pollution and toxins, it may be our consumerism. Factories producing plastics, chemicals, making energy, using energy, most of it producing unpleasant discards, all for the things we buy and use.

When we’re choosing whether to support environmental foundations or cancer research foundations, we might think about how our environment impacts our bodies, our children’s bodies and future generations.

Everything else

I’m sure there are many good causes (and probably more than a few not so good ones too). I would suggest that it’s not a bad thing to let your interests and passions lead you when choosing something to support. If you see something lacking, whether it be awareness of an issue or whatever, fell free to take action! Seek out those that have noticed the same deficiencies and bring awareness, bring money, bring time, bring what you can.

More to life (and death)

While the effort to make this world a better place are great. While we absolutely should be looking after our earth and looking after each other. This world is not all there is. Don’t be blinded by human efforts to what God has done.

Mum sent me another part of her story for Breast Cancer Awareness month. It’s about something that I had not heard about and I’m sure many people are not aware of the ongoing problems cancer and surgery can cause.

Mum writes:

Since writing My Story, there has been an interesting development. My hubby and I went away for a few days. I awoke on the first morning of our break with an extremely sore and sensitive upper right arm. At first, I didn’t know what to think it was, and then it hit me, “I wonder if it is the beginnings of lymphoedema?”

I recalled a few years ago that I had an extremely sensitive forearm, and when I later mentioned it to my doctor, she said that if it happened again to get on to antibiotics straight away.

Of course, being in a ‘strange’ place, I didn’t quite know what to do. I went to the local pharmacist and spoke with him. When I said that we were going home in a couple of days, he said he was sure it would be okay until then. However, over night it had really troubled me and the next day it was feeling worse, with some pins and needles in my fingers, so I trundled off to the local medical centre. The doctor was not certain, but as a precaution started me on a course of antibiotics.

I recall when I first heard about lymphoedema at a support group meeting after my surgery (it is something that doctors seem reluctant to tell you about!), and mentioned it to my husband, he broke down and said that he thought “it” was all going to be over at the end of treatment. I must say, the possibility of getting lymphoedema was something that I was quite conscious of for some time after my treatment, but with the passing of time, it has tended to go from my mind.

Two days before I had these symptoms, I was filling up watering cans and putting weed killer on the lawns (a large area), waving my (right) arm from side to side to spread the liquid as far as possible. The thought did go through my head as to whether I should be doing it or not, but I have done quite a lot of reasonably heavy carrying over the last few years without ill effect.

Anyway, I still don’t know for sure whether it is a sign of lymphoedema, but it certainly is a warning, and I am going to take more care in future. Once again, like checking one’s breasts, it is not something to become complacent about!

So what is Lymphoedema?

I was really impressed with the Lymphoedema Association of Australia website, see there for more detail.

Lymph noun a colourless liquid containing white blood cells, that bathes the tissues and drains through the lymphatic system into the bloodstream.
Oedema (also edema) noun a condition characterised by an excess of watery fluid collecting in the cavities or tissues of the body.

The lymph system is made up of vessels similar to our blood vessels, but they contain a clear liquid that doesn’t pump around like blood does. They assist in drainage when there’s an excess of water and proteins; for example, after an inflammatory response when you hurt yourself the swelling goes down because things are being drained away. Normally that happens of its own accord, but if the lymphatic system gets blocked it can slow the healing of tissues, become chronically inflamed, produce heat and foster infection.

Symptoms include:

• Pains
• Aching
• Pins and needles
• Heat without redness
• Gradual swelling without pain

Obviously those symptoms may refer to many conditions, in this case ignoring them can lead to more unpleasant consequences.

Primary lymphoedema is caused by too few or non-functioning lymph vessels. Your chance of getting primary lymphoedema is increased by contracting secondary lymphoedema, i.e. improper drainage in one part of your body might lead to problems in another part. After cancer treatment secondary lymphoedema may be induced by: surgery, removal of lymph nodes or cutting of lymph vessels; radiotherapy, which can kill lymph vessels.

Diagnosis and treatment

In 90% of cases lymphoedema can be diagnosed by your doctor according to your symptoms and history. For more difficult cases CT scans and lymphoscintigraphy can be used.

There are several facets of treatment and the LAA runs courses teaching therapists about the treatments. Mum’s doctor didn’t know of any lymphoedema specialists in their area and sent her to a physiotherapist. I hope that the physio will be able to teach mum some techniques for keeping any lymphoedema occurrences under control.

So it turns out that there’s more to Breast Cancer than cancer itself. As if that wasn’t bad enough! I guess this is a case where we want to support research. If we can find less damaging methods of treatment then we can reduce these secondary effects.

Pink Ribbon Day

Wow! So here it is, Pink Ribbon Day… and I’m sitting at home doing assignments so I won’t see anyone selling ribbons or badges or anything else. Obviously there’s opportunity to donate at their site, and they have t-shirts available for purchase too! They don’t have any dandelion ones left in my size. :(

There are also many people across the country hosting Pink Ribbon breakfasts.

“The 2007 target is to raise 2.25 million dollars by having approximately 5000 people hosting a pink ribbon breakfast,” explains Ms Murdoch. “But the response this year has been phenomenal and there are already 7800 people registered to host a breakfast…”

That almost brought a tear to my eye. Perhaps it seems silly, but it’s always wonderful when someone’s best expectations are exceeded.

Breast Cancer Risk Calculator

In an effort to dispel myths and misconceptions about Breast Cancer among young women, the National Breast Cancer Centre today launched a risk calculator. It is not meant to allow you to be complacent about checking your breasts by telling you that you live a healthy lifestyle and are at low risk (low risk is still some risk!), but to make you aware of the risk factors of breast cancer that you may be unnecessarily exposing yourself to.

Coalition’s promise

We have a federal election coming up in Australia. You can tell by all the anti-drug adverts on TV (they’re really disgusting, nothing compared to the grim reaper smoking adverts!).
I’ve been umming and ahhing over who I might vote for. I don’t really know a great deal about it, as far as I can see Australia hasn’t been doing too badly under the Howard government (Liberal Party/Coalition), housing prices are too expensive, but the dollar is up against the greenback. I’ve been thinking that I should read up on things before the election gets here.

This morning on the Today show (Mum told me) Jane McGrath mentioned the Coalition’s promise to donate $12million to the McGrath foundation if they’re re-elected. That would fund 30 breast cancer nurses to go out into the country for 3 years.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. Obviously it’s an excellent thing to fund those nurses, medical and emotional support is lacking in the country. On first glance it sounds like they’re buying votes.
On the other hand, if mum hadn’t have seen it on TV I wouldn’t have known about it and I’m not sure many other people would either. Apart from that one news story (I found buried in a Google search) I couldn’t find any reference to it on the Today website, on the McGrath Foundation website or in other Google Searches. It wasn’t in my news headlines this morning… I guess you can’t really sell something to people who don’t know they’re buying it.

So I think that might be one point for the Coalition!

Showing support

Apart from buying a ribbon where you see people selling them, donating to your favourite organisation (Cancer Council, McGrath Foundation, National Breast Cancer Centre, there’s so many!), you can also buy Pink products from the National Breast Cancer Foundation. They have some that they sell year round and some limited October editions.

Some of the links that I’ve included are a bit slow, some aren’t loading, probably due to Pink Ribbon Day. If you can’t connect please try again later!

I overheard a woman on the train say “I don’t miss my hair, I don’t feel bad about going bald because it means that the treatment I’m having is working.”

It’s nice that she doesn’t feel bad about herself, but it made me a little sad because it’s not necessarily true. I don’t know what her condition is, but obviously my mind was drawn to cancer. Perhaps in her case the hair-loss is concurrent with successful treatment, but it might not be.

I thought I’d try to share some things that I’ve learnt over time and from my university studies.

Uncontrolled growth

Most of our body is made up of cells (go here for a cute animation about cells). Small, contained units that come together and interact to make tissues (skin, heart, liver, intestines etc) and can also be individuals in our body (e.g. cells travelling around in our blood). As we grow our cells duplicate our DNA and split in half. This happens a lot when we’re young because we are getting bigger and we need more cells to make up our bigger selves, but it slows down as we get older (which is one of the reasons children heal more quickly than oldies when they’re hurt).

Cancer is a disease that occurs when cells divide when they shouldn’t. They can divide in one area and create tumours or they can break away and spread (known as metastasis). Lots of anti-cancer drugs (including many chemotherapy drugs) target the fact that most of our cells don’t divide very often anymore. The drugs only go into dividing cells, or only affect attributes of dividing cells, and kill them. This is why our hair falls out; hair cells are one part of our bodies that still divides often.

Not all cancers are the same

This seems obvious since there’s breast cancer, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, testicular cancer, lung cancer, leukemia, bowel cancer… the list is long. However, did you know that different types of cancers have different characteristics? A breast cancer cell behaves differently to a leukemia cell. They have different (genetic) defects and they respond to different drugs. As pelf eloquently pointed out in her post about breast cancer, when cancer spreads to another part of the body the new cancer site has the same characteristics (and the same name) as the original cancer.

If a patient appears to have several cancers, it’s important to find out which one is the “primary” cancer, because treatment can be targeted to that type of cancer. Until recently it wasn’t possible to tell, with certainty, the cancers apart (even now it can be difficult and expensive), so you would need to treat them with a more general drug. This is where we come back to hair loss. If you were treated with a general dividing-cell-killer your hair might fall out, but some of the cancer cells might be “resistant” to the drug. In that kind of case the cancer could be reduced, but it may easily return.
I’m not an expert on the types of treatment currently available for cancer. Please listen to your doctor on what the best course of treatment for you is.

What are these gene things?

I get a lot of people giving me raised eyebrows or blank stares when I ask them if they know what DNA is, what a gene is, what a protein is. People support Jeans for Genes day, but they never think to ask what a gene is. I have difficulty explaining it to people; I think it’s partly because they’ve already decided that it’s too difficult to understand, but I’m going to try again!

“Genetic” refers to DNA, it’s our genetic material and it determines eye colour, hair colour, girl, boy, hairy, smooth, heaps of things. Genes are sections of DNA that encode a message to make proteins. Proteins are tiny little structures made inside our cells that perform different functions inside and outside of our cells.

Something analogous to this might be a story. DNA is the alphabet. Parts of the alphabet (letters) come together in different arrangements to form words. Genes are the words. By themselves they don’t always mean much, but with proper arrangment they form a sentence that might have some meaning. Proteins are the sentences; sometimes they’re short and sweet, sometimes long and arduous. However, even sentences don’t mean a lot without some context, other sentences that come together to form a story. The story is all the stuff that happens in our bodies. If you go backwards and change one part of the process it can change the story. Changing one letter can change a whole word, adding or removing a word can change a sentence and can change the story. In that way, changing a tiny part of DNA can “mutate” a gene. Deleting a whole gene can have a small consequence, like removing a tiny part of a protein, or it can have catastrophic effects like removing whole sentences from the story.

Do I have a cancer gene?

I suspect that you’ve heard a bunch of gene names from the media that are related to or responsible for cancer. When I was younger I heard about the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that are “responsible” for breast cancer. I thought to myself, “Great! I’m going to get my DNA tested to see if I have those genes and then I’ll know if I’m going to get breast cancer!” That’s not how it works though! In most cases everyone has these genes; they have important roles in the growth and function of cells. It’s when they get mutated or deleted cancer develops (I plan to talk more about that in another post soon).

The other part of that story is that we have 2 copies of each gene (one from mum and one from dad). So we can inherit a gene that might lead to cancer, but as long as the other copy is ok we don’t get cancer. However, if the other copy gets mutated in one cell later in life we might develop a tumor. That’s why cancer sometimes runs in families. Don’t fret though, there’s absolutely no guarantee that you will get something even if someone else in your family did.

Let me know if you found this informative! Was there something that you didn’t understand? Was the whole thing too long for you? Is there anything you want to know more about?