Tale of two cancer awareness months

NET Cancer Awareness Day is next month. In some states, it will be NET Cancer Awareness Month. But if you don’t already know someone who has the disease, you likely won’t know it.

My newspaper was printed on pink paper this weekend. Every NFL team wore pink this weekend. This morning, I was greeted with a pink Cancer Sucks bracelet when I turned my computer on. It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month and it is impossible not to notice.

…we won’t give up…

Today will probably interview no one with NET cancer next month–unless they have done something else, in which case the subject will never come up. There will be no 60 Minutes segment. Even The View, The Talk, Doctor Oz,  and The Doctors will not expend a minute talking about NET cancer. Only about 12,000 cases a year are diagnosed, there are only about 120,000 people in the US who know they have it. It won’t sell soap, beer, or Cadillacs.

What is it about breast cancer?

I want to understand our fascination with breast cancer. Sometimes it seems as though it is the only cancer that exists in the US–even in months other than October. Lung cancer kills more people, but the perception is it goes with smoking–and those folks bring it on themselves. Colon cancer is awful but we don’t like to talk about that region of the body. Pancreatic cancer is also nasty, but you really can’t see it–and if you are diagnosed with it you are dead anyway–and Americans like easy success stories.

I hate this world without Jane.

Cervical cancer and prostate cancer are widely known and we have made real strides against both. But they are both “down there” and we just don’t talk about things like that.

But breasts are highly visible and have a psychological impact on both sexes. I remember listening to a woman back in the ’70s or ’80s who talked about how her breasts defined her as a woman–and how devastated she was psychologically by their removal. Certainly that threat to sexuality plays a part in all this.

NET cancer and the world I hate

My sister is a longterm breast cancer survivor. My sister-in-law will become a five-year breast cancer survivor this winter. I don’t like the idea of a world without either of them.

But I hate this world without Jane. That is not an idea–it is a daily experience. And I know that had we spent the merest reasonable fraction of what we spend a year on breast cancer on NET cancer over the last 40 years Jane might not have died. She might have walked with me in these last two Relays for Life. She might have walked these two Marathon Walks with me. She might have been a survivor.

But breasts are highly visible…

If we had spent the merest reasonable fraction of what we will spend on breast cancer this year on NET cancer that oncolytic virus would already be in Phase I or Phase II testing–or might have been approved already before Jane died.

Nothing fills this hole

So I hope those of you raising money for breast cancer research or undergoing treatment for breast cancer will pardon my jealousy and envy. We have mammograms that detect your cancer so early we have created a Stage Zero. We have surgery and drugs and radiation treatments that offer you the potential of a cure. NET cancer patients have no quick detection tests. We have no drugs or radiation treatments that do more than slow the disease down or ease the symptoms. Your events draw huge crowds–ours have trouble drawing dozens.

It won’t sell soap, beer, or Cadillacs.

November will come. We will hold our tiny walks and piggyback on larger events. We will struggle to garner coverage in small newspapers and on local television stations.

But we won’t give up: A death from NET cancer leaves just as big a hole as a death from anything else.