Beautiful Breasts

Now that I've caught your attention with the title and the beautiful photo, I wanted to let you know that October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Please don't glance at that first sentence and think, "I'm skipping this". The numbers regarding breast cancer, while decreasing over the last several years, continue to be very disturbing. If you're a woman or love a woman then please take note.

According to the CDC, in 2004 (the most recent year numbers are available)

• 186,772 women and 1,815 men were diagnosed with breast cancer
• 40,954 women and 362 men died from breast cancer
• breast cancer is the second leading cancer cause of death in women, surpassed only by lung/bronchus cancer

In spite of these sobering numbers, a recent ABC poll indicates

• only four in 10 women say they've ever given themselves a self-exam
  
• fewer -- 27 percent -- report having done a self-exam in the past month, as is suggested starting at age 20.
  
• Even among women over 40 with a family history of the disease -- two key risk factors -- just 38 percent do monthly self-exams.

Early detection is the key to surviving breast cancer. For information on monthly breast self-exams, mammograms, and more, please visit American Cancer Society's site. You could just possibly save your life or the life of someone you love.

You have to know I'm passionate about this - how many times do you hear a Domme say please three times in such a short amount of time? ;)

I have one little tip that helps me be motivated and to remember to do my exams. (Ok, a patient with cancer and a father with cancer motivates me, but being all stressed out usually means I need something to jog my memory.) I've set up a once-a-month reminder on my windows calendar to do my breast self-exams. The reminder says "190,000 women died of breast cancer in one year. Don't let yourself be a statistic - do your breast exam today".