Jan 18, 2008   | COMMENTS     

I HAVE BREAST cancer. I tell you this to help me accept the blow that has struck.

I look at the horror and shock in the faces of others hearing this news to assess whether I am experiencing this moment in real time or if this is just a nightmare I can’t wake up from. And like “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts, who announced in August she had breast cancer, I, too, never thought I would be writing this. 

But now I must stop, see and assess my life differently as African-American lesbian poet and activist Audre Lorde told all women confronted with breast cancer in “The Cancer Journals” before she succumbed to the disease in 1992. There are no instructional guides on how to personally handle this ongoing health crisis, because it is about the particular woman herself.

“Each woman responds to the crisis that breast cancer brings to her life out of a whole pattern, which is the design of who she is and how her life has been lived. The weave of her everyday existence is the training ground for how she handles crisis,” Lorde wrote.

The weave of my everyday existence for the past 20 years has been about social injustice concerning race, class, gender identities and expressions as it relates to religious intolerance. But now I take up another gauntlet: the politics of breast cancer, because this too is personal. It’s important to explore the function of cancer in an economy, the medical establishment’s approach to cultural and sexual differences and its insensitivity to women’s health issues, the political and emotional implications of prosthetic breasts that hide the pain of amputation and disguise the epidemic of the disease, and the often dangerous reconstructive surgeries in the name of “quality of life” and “normal” femininity.

Our silence and invisibility on this issue will not protect us.

In October 2004 two-time Grammy-winning rock singer, songwriter and lesbian activist Melissa Etheridge was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“Our society doesn’t say the word cancer much,” said Etheridge. When her grandmother was dying from breast cancer, no one even told Etheridge what was wrong. But Etheridge refused to remain silent or invisible about the disease. At the 2005 Grammy Awards, Etheridge made a return to the stage bald from chemotherapy to perform a tribute to Janis Joplin. Etheridge was praised not only for her performance but also for her courage.

With any illness you look for spiritual sustenance. But be leery of some of the self-help books and New Age Religions on the market, because they too can make you go into hiding with their “blame the victim” philosophies. 

The big question we should ask is why, with all the advances made in breast cancer research, are there so many women across race, class, education and sexual orientations being diagnosed with breast cancer today? Is there an environmental link?

Research has shown there is a correlation between environmental pollutants and breast cancer, like personal care products containing endocrine disruptors and other controversial compounds that have been marketed to both black and white women in popular women’s magazines since the 1950s.

According to the American Cancer Society, every three minutes, a woman in the U.S. is diagnosed with breast cancer. It is the most common cancer among women and about 178,480 women will be found to have invasive breast cancer in 2007. Because of the disparity in health care, African-American women are more likely to die from the disease although more white women are diagnosed with it.
 
Being a lesbian or bisexual woman does not increase your risk for breast cancer, but risk factors like fear of coming out to health care providers, less access to health insurance and having fewer doctor’s visits for mammograms and professional breast exams will increase your chances.

To address the homophobia and life-threatening illnesses lesbians and bisexual women are likely to face in our health care system, the Mautner Project was founded  in 1990 following the death of Mary-Helen Mautner in 1989 of breast cancer. 

My good news for now is that I’m up! I didn’t wake up dead but I woke up still suspicious as to why so many women are confronted with this disease. 

I got the report from my surgical oncologist that my nodes are negative. Yippee! 

So this is what I know so far on this journey: My cancer is Stage 1, my nodes are negative, my tumor is the size of a blueberry and there is no sign of metastasis. This is perhaps as good as it gets for a person diagnosed with breast cancer.