That was the opinion of a woman on Facebook who vented that anyone who wanted to pay $35 for a pink t-shirt just to parade around for cancer awareness was just wasting her money. (I refer to any number of organized events during the month of October designed to raise breast cancer awareness and, more importantly, money.) It would be more useful, she opined, to drive a woman to chemotherapy if one really wanted to help. She went on to say these fund raising organizations were not entirely what they said they were and didn't offer the services they really said they offer.
She wasn't necessarily wrong. I would have re-posted her comments here except they've been taken down either by the author herself or the Facebook group's organizer (organizing a team of walkers for such a fundraising walk.)
Cancer is a big business. Surgeons, hospitals, medical equipment companies and their sales reps, pharmaceutical companies and reps, etc., There's a whole non-medical world seeking to profit as well (well intentioned or not). Some would call them wholistic healers; others would call them reckless scam artists. Some are legitimate; some are not. The problem is, the patient has to sort all this out in a pretty short period of time right after she hears the word "cancer."
I don't know the woman who posted this but maybe she was hurting. Maybe she was still near to her breast cancer experience. Maybe she got burned. Her post wasn't hostile but it was angry.
I feel for her but I bought the $35 t-shirt anyway. I also checked out the organization for this particular fundraising walk and felt comfortable enough to donate more. I haven't volunteered to drive anyone to chemo yet but I did download the application to donate time to said fundraising organization.
It's not much but maybe someday we can accomplish two things with all this awareness. Eradicate cancer and the big business that goes with it.
It can make you wonder if one group is working against the other.
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