Say it like you mean it.

You've all seen my bracelet. You know with what pride and commitment I wear it. I love it when someone takes hold of my wrist to admire what they suppose is just a silver bangle and then I tell them to take a closer look. Usually it takes them a few moments as they first squint, then blink, then look at me as if to say does it say what I think it says? Yes, it does.

Fuck cancer.

And this morning, I have yet another person to wear it for. I silently touch the cool metal and say her name in my heart. An ocean away she is having a mastectomy today to remove her left breast and, may it please the universe, every trace of malignancy. Please.

The list of names of family members and friends who have or had cancer keeps growing. Some have remarkable success stories to revel in, but they are too few. And so, I donate in their cherished memories to The Canadian Cancer Society, I participate and fundraise for the CIBC Run for the Cure, I support Movember to raise awareness of prostate cancer, and have my mammogram and check ups faithfully. 

There's a public service announcement airing on TV from a website called www.getscreenednovascotia.ca with a little mocking voice emanating from a tiny, moving dot on the screen saying You can't find me in that sing-songy way that kids sometimes do. This is in an effort to get Nova Scotians to get screened regularly for cancers in the breast, colon, and cervix for which early detection most often means survival. But how many actually do?

So many forms of cancer are just too silent, so that by the time the person is symptomatic and goes to see a doctor, the tumours are already well-established and there are often metastases elsewhere. Ovarian cancer is just such a ‘silent killer’; it took my beloved mother in her sixty-eighth year. And it was only a blood test that showed a slight rise in his PSA level that gave my brother the impetus to get biopsied. Mark had surgery in October just before his fifty-fifth birthday and is, mercifully, cancer-free today.

In 1988, Julie lost her mother at age 54 to bone cancer that had spread from her breast. Her father lived with prostate cancer for over twenty years although he died from other causes. She has shaved her head and held fundraising events at her workplace for the Run for the Cure for several years. 

Cancer makes me so angry. It spares no one. Age doesn’t matter. Babies and children get sick and are put through excruciating treatments in hopes of gaining more years in which to live healthy lives. How do pediatric oncologists do it? I wonder.

Meanwhile, I wear my bracelet every single day. FUCK CANCER.

And I say out loud so many names: Alice. Anne. Louise. Yvonne. Garnie. Lois. Marj. Paul. Marie. Isaac. Amanda. Elias. Kate. Dale. Marion. Sharon. Mark. Kimberley. Ivan. Alexander. Mrs. O’Brien. Millie. Laura. Gwen. Dorothy. Ben. Ena. Jane. . . . and Mary Lynn.

Fuck cancer.