That wasn't quite the point I was making Birds.
It is a nightmare month because it is upsetting to see the way people trivialise a life threatening disease with all the pink crap and fluffiness that we are bombarded with. All the stuff that suggests that BC is a rather fun soft girly kind of cancer to have, that suggests it is a woman's cancer (lots of men die from it too - and the pink stuff is very alienating for them)
People need to be encouraged to be health aware at all times of the year not just when they have a bit of a reminder because it's BC month. And rather than models with pink glitter on their boobs prancing around in their underwear, women should constantly be aware of the signs and symptoms of BC and how to check and when to go to the doctor and how to really know what their bodies look like so they can detect changes early.
Instead of lets all buy a pink ribbon, lets have a look at the reality of this illness - have scars from my shoulders to my pubic bone from my surgery - some over a foot long. I have lain in a hospital bed on every kind of drip and transfusion, bedsores on both my elbows from having to keep my arms rigidly in place because of all the stuff being put into me, antibiotics to try to contain the massive kidney infection and septicaemia from the neutropenia, liquid diarrhoea dripping out of me continuously. I could go on about the two years of active treatment and the major residual health problems from continuing treatment.
But I was lucky, I am still alive. Breast cancer doesn't kill people, secondary metastatic breast cancer kills people - the funding for people with secondary BC is appalling, the govt, have stopped funding for some of the life extending drugs available.
This is awareness, this is the reality of cancer - it isn't pretty so lets stop pretending it is. Lets drop the stupid awareness once a year stuff and get some real education going and some means of addressing inadequate funds. TV infomercials about checking all year round, information in schools about checking (very young women can get BC too). And lets talk about other cancers that get far less publicity than BC - but are not 'glamorous' enough for models to endorse the campaigns.
Awareness is fine if it really is awareness, not a once a year marketing - no one thinks cancer will happen to them, most people don;t want to talk about it, we need to talk about cancer as a real thing that happens to lots of people all year round, not put a burst of energy into putting your bra colour on FB then forgetting about it. These things make people dealing with illness and conditions angry - as someone said up thread if you are living with something, every month is awareness month.