Pink thoughts

As I stood at the local train station early this Saturday morning, I glanced across the platform and saw an advertisement with a bunch of bananas on it, one of which was pink. My heart sunk slightly and I took a deep breath. I knew exactly what this poster was all about without even having to read it - breast cancer awareness month. Or as it has become so well known - pink October.

I am not alone in my struggles with this month. Click on any Breast Cancer Care on line discussion forum and you will find many many women who suffer from this disease hiding out this month. The most drastic of these is a lady in my little on line support group who was pleased that her hip replacement surgery, which is needed as breast cancer cells have basically destroyed most of her own hip, had been brought forward to 1 October so she could hide out and hopefully avoid the whole of pink October. I'm not wishing serious surgery as a solution to avoid it, but it does stir up some very mixed emotions in those affected by breast cancer, which many people would not be aware of at all.

This may sounds surprising or ungrateful at first reading. How could I possibly have issue with raising awareness and money towards a cause that has affected me so much. Well, I don't. Let me make clear up front that I have come to the conclusion that I would suffer every pink wristband, badge, t-shirt there is, in order to raise money for support for those who have to suffer from this disease. But it has taken time for me to come to that conclusion.

I think the route of my initial dread of pink October was first time round the timing. Back in 2005 when I had just finished months of treatment and I was trying to be "normal" and escape this nightmare I had been undergoing that year. I felt bombarded by constant reminders. I would walk round supermarkets with jolly announcements about "fun pinkness" and it felt like every paper or magazine I picked up was full of pink hair straighteners, pink this and pink that. Even my return to work that month, which was supposed to be something that made me feel like I had before my diagnosis, was marred by posters in the lift and pink buckets here there and everywhere. It felt so far from what I had, and what I continue, to actually go through. All these pink products that surrounded me reduced me to tears on more than one occasion and on more than one pink October. For the record breast cancer and it's treatment isn't fun or frivolous or "pink" - it is harsh and horrible.

I used to dread seeing friends or family wearing their pink ribbons when they saw me. They probably felt they were supporting me. I felt like all they saw was the cancer. "Look how much we are supporting you by branding ourselves with pink." I felt like screaming "Look how much that silly ribbon is upsetting me - can't you see what I am actually going through - it ain't pink!" Unfair of me, and I apologize. I just couldn't and still struggle to be defined by my illness. It isn't what I am. I am not pink. It is just something that has happened to me.

Over time, acceptance some would say, others would say prayerfully, I have softened greatly on my views of this pink October. We live in a broken world, where 1 in 9 women in the UK will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and 1 in 3 a cancer of some form in their lifetime. And this world is also a media world. And if the media has chosen pink as the avenue through which to raise awareness, and ultimately money towards support and that longed for cure then so be it. I still find the hair straighteners somewhat insensitive as so many breast cancer sufferers lose their hair due to their treatments, but if a few pound from selling them goes towards research then that's the way it is.

This May I took part in a local breast cancer walk, the Pink Power Walk. Back in 2005 you never would have got me doing this, but I wore my pink t-shirt, as did my faithful supportive friends and we trained and walked and raised a lot of money. I'm no martyr for the cause, it felt great to be doing something really positive and I heard only last week that the money raised - well over £100,000 in total from that walk, has gone towards research against one of the most aggressive types of breast cancer. It made me want to do more of that kind of stuff, I currently selling peoples clothes on ebay to raise money and will be looking into doing other fundraising stuff.

I am very supportive of breast cancer charities. I always have been, it's just I have found some of the media frenzy tough to cope with. I am a member of Breakthrough Breast cancers Campaigns and Advisory network, and I periodically review publications for them at home and have attended a training day they offered earlier in the year. I am grateful for all the money raised each year in October. I will buy into the pink branding of it all, if I must, and quietly laugh at the irony of my own issues with using this pretty colour for something that is so far from pretty.

Put up pictures of pink bananas, although I am struggling to see the connection still, and dig deep when someone puts a pink bucket in front of you please. But maybe by reading this, be aware, the disease itself really is no fun at all. I am fully up for fun in the process of raising money, and feel pleased I have got to a place where I can accept that pink is the way that we do this. This girl just won't be eating pink bananas if that's ok? They sound disgusting anyway.