Breast Cancer blog | Think Pink: Happy Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I never used to like pink and now oddly it is one of my favorite colours. I gravitate towards it almost unconsciously. Pink T-shirts, nail polish, and even a few pink highlights in my hair for kicks.

I am receiving an inspiring flood of emails from organizations like Susan G. Komen, Young Survival Coalition and the Hong Kong Breast Cancer Foundation.

Earlier this month I spent a weekend with a dozen plus young ladies (the 42 and under crew) who were either breast cancer survivors or current fighters. We were part of a Young Advocates Training with “Living Beyond Breast Cancer”, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that increases knowledge and awareness. We bonded over this disease, a similar fight, and were given some basics on how to take our stories to advocacy - how we could initiate change amongst legislators or to the news media.

We learned that in order to create change we needed to share our own stories with the public, the press, and the public policy makers. There was much to fight for including more funding for research, for prevention, for state-of-the-art mammogram machines and access to those machines especially for underserved women. Could I possibly go from survivor to advocate, I wondered?

A week after this weekend of training and making new friends, I had my six month date with my oncologist. After some banter on the latest in my life – yes, I was still swimming, still eating, and sleeping pretty well – we completed the exam and she literally gave me a thumbs up.