Breathe
By Anel Arellano Tejeda
Once again we greet each other in October, the pink month. Last year we met talking about the 10 unmissable points you should know as a woman about breast cancer, not to scare you or worry you, but to empower you in the most effective way there is, with information that is only useful if we dedicate ourselves to share it, especially with those women in our lives who, whether permanent or transitory, we have the opportunity to share time and conversations, those moments of social closeness that characterize us and go back pre-historically to the times when we sat around the fire in the caves, to take care of the young and the provisions in community. Those data that we talk to each other can represent a substantial change in the life of the interlocutor, besides, in my activity as a teacher there is a premise in the academy written by the French essayist Joseph Joubert, which says: "To teach is to learn twice" so the data that you share continuously, you will hardly forget them.
This year, in September, at a congress of specialists in integral and multidisciplinary breast cancer care from the main health institutions in the country, I was struck by how annoying it seemed to them that in the month of October "everything was pink". I assume they were referring to how opportunistic they find private industry, the media and people who make allegories of using the color pink as a banner for their actions only in the month of October, "as if cancer were seasonal".
Secondary to this commentary it was impossible for my brain to concentrate on the valuable data in the papers, because only one question occupied my mind, "What's wrong with wearing pink or putting on a ribbon?"
Articles and publications from various social networks say the following - Breast cancer is many things, but pink is not. "No, well!" if that's what we're going for, childhood cancer is not golden, prostate cancer is not blue, lung cancer is not white! I would say to those people: "Come on people", the colors of the ribbons are objective expressions of subjective motives assigned to a specific cause and whose only purpose is to show solidarity and support for causes that the rest of the year we hardly turn to see.
A remarkably optimistic expression is the one attributed to the phrase "see everything rosy", this phrase is used to describe an extremely positive and optimistic attitude towards life, where one tends to ignore the negative aspects and focus only on the good. Now I ask you: is that wrong? In a world like the one we live in, decadent, at war, with hunger, poverty, social injustice and violence against fellow human beings and animals, is choosing to live through the positive view of things really that bad?
No one ever said that the breast cancer experience is rosy, however, those of us who work with women who unfortunately receive the news of having this disease and then go through it, yes with pain and sadness, but beyond that, with supremely enormous courage and strength, which are key characteristics of virtually all women in every momentous event of their lives.
Despite the pain and the medical and socioeconomic complications, they make you realize that no, cancer is not pink, but then what color is hope, courage, enthusiasm, empathy, sisterhood, strength? They are that color.
Today's society, through social networks, opts for an action that has been very popular lately: "cancellation". This process, which is the result of the actions of the masses, not of individuals, aims to erase from the cyber world (which apparently is more real than the ground we walk on and the air we breathe) that which some agree is not correct, without giving place to the necessary debate and healthy controversy added to the inescapable human right of freedom of expression.
You may or may not agree with something, the fact that you do not like it does not mean that you are anointed with the moral compass that governs the whole society to think or feel as you do, for that you work on tolerance, because as another old popular saying goes "what shocks you, shocks you".
The multi-colored ribbons identify those involved with the causes, and that does not harm anyone, it empathizes, solidarity and moves social blocks that for particular reasons are identified with the subject, all human beings since childhood development seek the approach to their peers, hence the social smile of a baby his first days, or the groups of friends selected by an adolescent when he is discovering his personality. The same happens with these harmless colored ribbons, perennial signs that although not every day you consciously think about a particular situation, there is a day or a month a year, in which that thought is recurrent in you and in many people who make up society.
When I went a little deeper into what I read in networks to write this text, I came across another anglicism, "pinkwashing" which refers to the variety of political and marketing strategies aimed at promoting institutions, countries, people, products or companies appealing to their sympathetic status with a particular cause, in this case, breast cancer. This text is not written from my point of view as an operating staff of a hospital that wants to convince you that cancer is pink and that you should wear a ribbon, precisely because I have spent eight years of my life knowing that it is not and dedicating my medical work to the detection and diagnosis of breast cancer, 60.6% of the time we diagnose it as a locally advanced or metastatic disease. I am writing this as a public servant, aware of the deficiencies of the health sector and of the debt we have owed women for 50 years, the problem with pinkwashing is not the excessive and superfluous strategies of October, I see the glass half full, I like to think positive and before closing this text, I am going to invite you to continue wearing pink, but now both outside and inside, how? Believe it, convince yourself that you genuinely care about the cause and if you want to express it with a pink ribbon on your clothes, that's fine, but beyond that, actions are needed:
1.- Start with the personal ideological change that "it will not happen to me" and have your annual studies, mastography if you are over 40 years old and ultrasound if you are younger but have symptoms such as palpable lump or external changes in your breasts, and do not forget a conscientious monthly self-examination on the fifth day after the last day of the menstrual cycle.
2.- Remind all women near you that mastography is a harmless study that has a high possibility of finding a breast tumor in early stages, that they should lose their fear and have it done, and that being young (under 40 years old) does not exempt them from the possibility of suffering from it.
3.- Approach volunteers in hospitals and health centers, there are mutual aid groups for women who are undergoing curative or palliative treatments for breast cancer, selfless activities that nourish the soul and enrich the spirit.
If you are more proactive and work in institutions or establishments that have in their workforce women in risk groups, organize a campaign of timely detection of breast cancer completely free and operationally functional, with a simple list that you can send me to the following email: anel.arellano@salud.gob.mx, we can get them to attend your group of patients anywhere in the country and in all health institutions because a mastography as a glass of water, should not be denied to any woman in Mexican territory.
If you don't have time, but if you feel like it, the non-profit associations that are in charge of altruistic activities for in-kind donations and positive activities in support of breast cancer patients such as wig campaigns, makeup, eyebrow tattoos, micropigmentation of the nipple-areola complex, medical equipment such as breast ultrasounds, prostheses for reconstruction, etc., are supplies that are accepted, appreciated and most importantly, they take care of the logistics to make the events and alliances that guarantee their delivery. Below, I list the first 20 most participative according to Mayra Galindo Leal, Director of the Mexican Association for the Fight Against Cancer and coordinator of the Together Against Cancer Network, which includes almost 80 civil associations in Mexico that work for this cause, for your knowledge I list them and share contacts.
I leave the last of the thoughts I dedicated to this topic, the answer to the question with which I began this text: What is wrong with wearing pink or putting on a ribbon? If our eyes can see up to 10 million colors and if the main objective of human beings should be to exist in order to love and help, what difference does it make what color ribbon you wear?
*Medical Surgeon.
Specialist in Diagnostic and Therapeutic Imaging
Radiologist with High Specialty in Radiology of the Mammary Gland and interventional procedures.
Accredited by the CMRI Mexican Council of Radiology and Imaging, CMRI
Professor of the course of high specialty Radiology of the Mammary Gland and Interventional Procedures of the Regional Hospital Lic. Adolfo López Mateos. ISSSTE
Professor of Imaging at the Faculty of Medicine of the UNAM.
Currently part of the Technical-Medical team of the Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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