October 25: Guest Blogger Micchi

A dear friend of mine, Micchi's life has been touched by metastatic breast cancer several times over. I asked them to share their thoughts and experiences. This is what they wrote.

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When my best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, it was a kick to the gut but a manageable one. Yes, we were all blinded by the pinkwashing, and convinced that she would beat this and be cancer-free before we really knew what was happening.

We learned pretty quickly that that was likely not an option, when the staging and the reveal that the cancer had spread came down. This was a terminal diagnosis. It might be next year, it might be next decade, but eventually, this would be her downfall.

I was lucky. I'd been dealing with my mother's slow progression of illness for several years by this point. I already knew that, with a terminal illness, one bad day could turn into a month of bad days pretty easily. I'd learned that even if that cold was easily treated, one misstep could mean pneumonia and a hospital stay.

It's terrifying, and it's heartbreaking.

On top of that, for someone affected by metastatic breast cancer, pinkwashing has done no favors. Any time I talk about my friend, there's the quiet, worried "Oh, what kind of cancer does she have? Breast cancer? Oh, but they're made so many strides on breast cancer!"

...Yeah, no, not really.

Metastatic breast cancer patients face a unique hurdle: erasure. Their fight, their struggle, their pain is constantly erased by races for The Cure! and how beatable breast cancer is!

And that erasure needs to stop.