Today, I thought I'd share one of my favorite videos. It's a collection of dumb and broken shit people have said to people with Metastatic Breast Cancer. You might recognize some of them from the Bingo game card featured on October 8th. Some are just pinkwashed ignorance, while others are jaw-droppingly callous.
One of them that irks me the most is the implication that if we have metastatic breast cancer, then we must not have been taking good care of ourselves. We must not have been exercising enough, eating the right foods, drinking the right beverages, doing the right thing.
Have you heard yet about the Bald Ballerina?
At age 23, Maggie Kudirka, a dancer at Joffrey Ballet School, was diagnosed in June of 2014 with breast cancer. But not just breast cancer. She was diagnosed right out the gate with Metastatic Breast Cancer. And she is a ballerina, and has been since the age of four.
In case you're not fully aware of how much physical training and work goes into being a ballerina, this Under Armour advert highlights what a grueling sport it is. Look at the shape she's in. That's normal for a ballerina. If someone so young and so fit could get metastatic breast cancer, what does that say about the rest of us? It's not our fault.
We might still have our hair. We might "look fine". We might even be able to continue working. But that doesn't make what we have any less serious. We have Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer. There is no cure. There is no point where we are "finished" with treatment if we want to continue to live a bit longer. This is as serious as it gets. We might seem fine but we will never BE fine. This is our new reality.
And no, you can't have my flat-screen TV when I die. What is wrong with you?
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