Petra Ibum Adjah, Programs and Communications Manager at Pink Africa Foundation (PAF), shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Celebrating the woman whose experience nudged me into the oncology space – My Mom․
This is two weeks overdue, but I have been swamped with plans for Pinktober.
She turned a year older on the 9th of September and I cannot emphasize enough how grateful I am for who she is and what she does.
Sometime in the early Y2Ks, she had a health scare.
She found a lump and went to see a doctor. I still remember how stiff the atmosphere felt as everyone waited with bated breath for the results.
When the pathology came back after the lumpectomy, it was benign and that resolved it.
It would be many years before I understood why everyone was so tense. So when I later saw a call for volunteers for a Pinktober event, I quickly signed up.
If there is one message I will continue to share, it is this: hiding does not change the diagnosis.
Fear, denial, and silence do not make a lump disappear. They only steal time – time that could be used to investigate, to know for certain, and to act. It is far better to clinically investigate every sign or symptom and tackle whatever the diagnosis is head-on than to live with the anxiety of the unknown.
Early detection and prompt treatment remain our best response.
My one hope this Pinktober is that there will be an uptake of all the free screening and awareness services available, and even more importantly, that there will be increased financial support for treatment – especially for women in underserved communities across LMICs where a diagnosis still too often means financial catastrophe.”
Other articles about Breast Cancer on OncoDaily.