The Cause:

After a month of pink ribbons and “I love boobies” bracelets and tweets filled with words like ta-tas, it would surprise me if a single person wasn’t aware that October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This year, more than ever before, it felt like people really have become more aware.

Questions about mammograms were answered not with “what’s that?” but with “of course I had one, plan to have one, will start having one as soon I reach the recommended age.”  Questions about self breast exams were answered with instructions on how to perform one and nodding heads everywhere.  ”Yes, I do them and I do them regularly!” seemed to be the standard answer.

This is amazing and wonderful and really does seem to confirm that awareness campaigns work.

The Campaign:

This year, in an effort to promote Breast Cancer Awareness, EdenFantasys joined up with Evolved Novelties and multiple other manufacturers to sponsor month long sales on pink toys — a portion of whose proceeds went to the Save the Ta-Tas foundation — as well as an incredible contest.  We asked you, our loyal community, to create videos expressing your awareness and then to vote on those videos.  The best three videos were to win prizes, the grand prize being a gift basket valued at over $500.

We were rewarded with many videos and an outstanding amount of votes!

And because we understand that not everyone wants to enter a contest or create a video, we also asked you to write; to write your thoughts and feelings and experiences with breast cancer.  Again, you responded with gusto.  Here on EdenCafe we got 14 fantastic posts and SexIs Magazine proudly published 6 different articles in their Breast Cancer Awareness Project.

The Winners:

Now that Breast Cancer Awareness Month is over we feel like we’ve all learned a little something, or become a little more aware.  And we hope that the learning and the awareness don’t stop with the end of the pink ribbons, we hope you continue to show your ta-tas some love all year round.  After all, they’re already close to your heart!

Please check the announcement page for a list of who won those fantastic prizes and for another look at any videos you may have missed.

From the bottom of our hearts we congratulate the winners and thank those of you who participated, however you participated. Whether through a video, a post, an article, a tweet or a vote, you helped. Thank you.

I think by now a lot of you know that I am a breast cancer survivor. Yes, I was really young when I got my diagnosis. And yes, I was very lucky not have to have a mastectomy or any kind of radiation. The doctors got it all out of me with the surgery. But I have to watch myself very carefully.

A few months after I had my surgery, one of the professors that I had did The Susan G. Komen 3 Day in my name. At the time, I was the youngest person she knew that had it, and she felt it was a way to help me. I threw a huge event to help her raise money for the walk, and the event brought in about half of what she needed to raise.

And here I am, years later, and remembering that professor who did the walk in my name.

At the start of the year, I decided that it was time for me to do the walk myself. My husband also wanted to join me. But there was no way in hell that we would be in shape enough to walk 60 miles over three days. And we knew that we wouldn’t be able to do the walk this year. So we are planning on doing the 2012 walk.

We were both out of shape and overweight when we started really training this passed July. I knew I needed to build up endurance and drop some weight so that I would save knees and ankles.

A two mile walk was hard on me before I started really working on this training.

I started to watch what I am eating. I’m not giving up my favorite foods, but I am eating them in moderation. Portion control has also helped a lot.

Yes it was hell at first. I was always feeling hungry. But that only lasted a few weeks. Now, I can’t even imagine eating as much as I used to. Even the smell of heavy and greasy food is a major turn off now.

I have also been walking a lot. I am walking everywhere that I physically can. My husband is joining me on this too. We have been slowly working up our distance.

Last week, I did an eight mile long walk. The longest I have done since I was in Junior High. I was tired, but I felt amazing.

I figure that if I can do a trail that is close to my place that is about 12 miles round trip easily, I will be ready for the walk.

I am also shooting to be jogging and running by New Years.

The walk is now ten months away. I have dropped three dress sizes, and I am very close to my walking goal.

My body is changing. I am far more active than I have been in years. My clothes are all getting too big for me. Even sex is better.

You could say that making the choice to do The 3 Day is changing my life in all kinds of better ways.

I am going to be honest- I have mixed feelings about National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Not because I don’t think breast cancer is important – I do – but because of the “pink washing”. NBCAM sometimes seems like another Hallmark Holiday, where we’re pressured to buy pink stuff in the hopes that corporations will throw money at breast cancer research and support. But unless 100% of profits are actually going to breast cancer related causes, these companies are still making money off of this cleverly marketed pink stuff. (A friend of mine admitted to me that NBCAM is really just an excuse to buy cute pink kitchen appliances for her.) The fact that these campaigns are so heavily gendered through the use of the color pink – with all its girly girl connotations – is also kind of weird. Pink is a high polarized color for many people, and taboo for manly men, which means a huge demographic is lost in the process. I feel like there’s this sense that if you simply buy a lot of pink crap in October you’re doing your part – but why not cut out the middleman, and donate directly to organizations that focus on breast cancer research? Education and open discourse about breast cancer is also super important and sometimes overlooked, and I am pleased that Eden Café is running this series of insightful and informative articles that truly focus on “awareness”.

I think there needs to be more education and awareness about women’s health issues in general , all year long. For example, did you know that taking the pill can actually drastically reduce your risk of uterine, ovarian and colorectal cancers, and these protections last for decades, even if you quit taking the pill? I think breast cancer has become a pet cause because let’s face it – EVERYONE loves boobs. It’s funny and cute to wear tight tee-shirts that say “save the boobs”. Consider how much less attention that heart disease gets compared to breast cancer, even though heart disease is the #1 leading cause of death for women! Our hearts, while vital for keeping us alive, are hidden, and therefore don’t make us look sexy while wearing a tight tee-shirt. So yes, let’s save the boobs – but let’s also push for more research, education, and awareness for ALL women’s health issues.

I am very fortunate that no one close to me has been diagnosed with breast cancer. The women in my family don’t seem to have a genetic predisposition to it. However, I understand that genetics are not the only factor for developing breast cancer. I am particularly concerned because I have large breasts, and studies have indicated this can put you at greater risk for advanced breast cancer. When you have large breasts, they kind of become a part of your identity, whether you want them to or not. I have no idea how losing one or both of my breasts would truly impact my sense of self if I had to undergo a mastectomy.

My boobs sprouted when I was 13 years old, and I swear they ballooned from an A cup to a D cup overnight. By the time I reached adulthood, I was wearing a DDD bra (or E or F or G depending on the brand). I wear a size 18, and society systematically tells bigger women we are not sexy or desirable. In this regard, my breasts were a sort of get out of jail free card. Perhaps my fat body is not deemed “socially acceptable”, but my big boobs are still ok. My larger-than-average boobs were allowed to be sexy when the rest of my body refused to conform to skinny sex appeal. Thus, my boobs have become a source of perverse power, but they sometimes feel like a barrier between the real me – my intellect, my genderqueer identity, my “problematic” body – and the world.

There is no good way to hide big boobs, and I find I don’t want to. I feel happier and more confident wearing form-fitting clothes that enhance my beautiful breasts. I like showing cleavage when I go to the dungeon or a dance party, and while wearing sexy lingerie for my lovers. But I also worry about being sexually objectified for my breasts to the point that people can’t see the rest of me. As a natural blonde with big boobs, I’ve always despised “blonde” jokes because they are degrading to the many sexy “smart blondes” who deserve to be taken seriously for their brains as well as their bodies. (I think Kristen Bell, Xeni Jardin, and Mae West are three examples of stereotype-smashing smart blondes).

My breasts are a private, sexualized body part, but they get in the way, extending from my body into the public domain, vulnerable to commentary and unwanted attention. Are they really me? I feel disassociated from them sometimes. I literally bump into people with them, knock things off shelves by accident. People want to touch them – other women, babies, straight men, gay men. (Some gay men think they can grab them without my permission because they are gay. I am telling you right now that non-consensual grabbing is never okay!) When I lived in Japan, I got groped by curious teenage girls on a regular basis – I think this was partly a cultural thing (teenage girls tend to grab each other for fun in Japan). I guess my boobs were extra exciting and exotic in a nation where boobs are highly fetishized, yet most women have petite breasts.

I sometimes wish I could take them off with my bra when I go to bed at night and just wear them for special occasions. I cannot find a button-down shirt that fits for the life of me. I cannot buy lingerie with fitted bra cups- it’s always too small, even when it’s plus-sized. I’ve had chronic back pain since the age of fifteen, that never really gets better. I am basically carrying a pair of three pound dumbbells on my chest, to the extent that a massage therapist told me I didn’t need to work out my pecs and shoulders because they were already muscularly overdeveloped from holding up my breasts.

So here’s the thing – even though I sometimes have mixed feelings about my boobs, I would never choose to have a partial breast reduction. I am genderqueer, and I’d honestly prefer to have full chest surgery than a breast reduction. I have total respect women who opt for breast reductions, but I’d rather keep my breasts as they are, in all their cartoonish, oversized glory.

So what would happen if I underwent a mastectomy? I honestly think I might choose to transition to a more masculine or androgynous physical appearance. Writer Patrick Califia famously transitioned to male when he reached menopause, because he figured that if he had to undergo hormone replacement therapy, he might as well live as the gender he wanted to be. As a genderqueer person, I am not strictly male or female – I wear my hair very short and masculine, but enjoy wearing dresses that flatter my curvy body. When I was thinner and smaller breasted, I tended to dress more masculine. I want to make it clear that I don’t think that having breasts or not having breasts makes you more masculine or feminine. Some women have breasts so small they are almost flat chested. Some transgendered men opt to keep their breasts for financial or personal reasons, some cismen have fleshier chests. So I want to make it clear that I do not think losing one’s breast(s) makes one less of a woman. But I do think it’s important for women who undergo mastectomies to feel sexy and comfortable with their bodies in whatever way works best for them. For me, it would be a chance to explore the masculine side of my personality that I never have truly been able to express because my large breasts. While I currently wouldn’t choose to opt for a full reduction, if I were in a position where I was forced to lose my breasts due to cancer, it is most likely how I would choose to cope with the situation. It is important to recognize that there are many potential strategies for surviving breast cancer – and each individual has to find their own way of feeling beautiful and good about themselves while going through such a physically and emotionally demanding experience.

[box]What do you think? Let us know in comments or write a post of your own! We’d love to hear what you have to say.[/box]

October is obviously breast cancer month. It’s plastered everywhere from Edenfantasys to the gas station to the grocery store. The pink ribbon is synonymous with breast cancer. It is recognized everywhere, which is a huge feat for breast cancer that everybody is so aware.

However, I really don’t feel qualified to talk to everybody about breast cancer. I have had cancer in my life, very close to. Breast cancer though, that I haven’t had to deal with, nor have I gone in to get checked, so me preaching about it seems wrong. Just because I don’t have a history of it in my family doesn’t mean I won’t be the first. I did do a self check laying in the bath the other day, though, and that’s what I want to get into.

Bathing, feminine cleanliness, and being aware of your body are a huge part of keeping yourself healthy, and noticing when there is something wrong. I’m going to go through some basic points of feminine hygiene. No they aren’t breast cancer related, but they can help us women notice when something is wrong elsewhere faster.

• Try to avoid using lubes, or other “lotions” that contain sugar, inside of your vagina. The sugar reacts badly and can cause a yeast infection.

• Shaving and trimming: Whether you go completely bare or not isn’t the point here. The point is, to keep the hair trimmed down or kept up so that it’s not oily or collecting “debris” from various sources, whether from your own body or not.

• ALWAYS … and I cannot stress this enough…always wear clean underwear. No matter how well you wipe and clean yourself after going to the bathroom, there will be small amounts of urine and feces that make it onto your panties (and boxers guys!). Which can cause infections and unpleasant smells.

• Clean yourself. There are several feminine washes available out there, even here on EdenFantasys. There are women, however, that are too sensitive for them, or find they don’t like them. Personally, I use a Dove Baby bar. It has the same PH as water, so it doesn’t mess with your natural balances, which is another thing that can cause infection or a whole mess of other unpleasant things. So, if you’re noticing a strong or unpleasant scent try the bar soap, and make sure you’re changing underwear everyday. If that doesn’t clear it up in a week or two, follow up with your doctor.

• When doing breast exams continue into the armpits looking for bumps. The cancer can take hold there as well.

• Spend some time naked, or at least feel yourself up! Take some time while you’re reading or watching a movie or sprawled in bed. Run your hand between your legs, over your breasts and nipples. Learn your body. Nobody else but you can detect subtle differences in your body.

• Watch your panties. Every woman gives off some fluid throughout the day. For some it’s clear, others an off white or white color. If it turns to yellow, it can be a sign of a problem. Again, if so, recheck to make sure you’re clean, as are your panties, and contemplate following up with a doctor to get it checked.

• If you find that your nipples are itchy all month long, even when your period isn’t near, try turning down the heat in your shower. Hot water can cause irritation.

• Tampons are not meant to be worn all day. Ideally you should be changing them several times a day. Especially when you go to the bathroom. Having them soak up urine, and leaving them in for hours like that isn’t really a good thing.

• Pads are not meant to be worn all day either. Your period ideally should not have a scent to it. Blood, vaginal blood especially, does have a faint smell even if you bleed very little. If you can smell it, you need to change your pads sooner. (I have been around several women I’ve fought not to tell that to. Only politeness stopped me.)

• Curvy women, and women in general, sweat, especially in summer, or when working out. Curvy women can sweat in the creases where their thighs meet the rest of the body. Again, if you aren’t showering everyday and changing your clothing you can develop a scent, or a rash. Body powders can help this (I quite like the shunga body powders) and make it less unpleasant.

• Shower at least once a day. I know some women that shower once and bath at night, or shower twice or more during their periods. It’s an individual choice of course.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Well, because just like doing self breast exams can help detect lumps and cancer early, so can doing these things. Keeping yourself clean so your body is clean and regulated it makes it a lot easier to notice when something is different. If you clean yourself thoroughly everyday and wear fresh panties, and have always had a white discharge, you will instantly notice a scent change or a color change that can mean you need to get checked. Your vagina is a large indicator of what is going on in the rest of your body. Taking care of it so you notice those changes is a huge help to yourself. Nobody wants to be sore, or have a strong odor coming from their feminine parts. But if that’s all you’ve known because you were never taught to take care of yourself, how would you know something is wrong? So please, KNOW your body. Every inch of it. After all, it is yours, right?

I have told the story of my diagnosis and surgery for my breast cancer already. It’s up and live here on Eden Cafe already.

Yes, I was very young at the age of 23. I was a young and very sexually active woman. A week after my surgery, I was really wanting to have sex with my boyfriend.

But there was a few problems with that:

First, I had a little trouble with my surgery. It started to abscess on me a few days after the surgery.  The whole area that the tissue was taken out of started to fill with fluid and started to stretch the skin and stitches. I had to be reopened up and drained out right in the doctor’s office.

The second problem is that after I was reopened, the wound had to stay open so that it wouldn’t abscess again. I had to keep it packed with gauze in it, but it was open, and I could actually look into my breast.

Third, my boyfriend is a major boob fetishist. He loves them. He paws, grabs and squeezes mine all the time. That isn’t a good thing with a hole in my breast.

The last problem with sex for me, is that I tend to be on top and like very rough and vigorous sex. That would mean a lot of bouncing and movement. Just the thought of it is painful, and not the fun kind of pain.

But a vibrator could only do so much, and I was wanting actual sex. It took my boyfriend and me about a week to find a way to have sex that wasn’t painful. He was not permitted to touch either breast. That would keep the temptation to grab the painful one down. I also had the godsend of a sports bra to keep them from moving during sex. We also learned that I had to be on top to keep the bounce down and pressure off of them.

I healed fine and was having sex normally. But I had a scar that was very bright because of having to be reopened and having to heal open. As soon as I was healed I became very self conscious of the scar. Don’t ask me why, I really don’t know. I just was. And I was for years. I would actually try to hide it from my lovers.

I would even keep bras on during sex, or find crazy ways to hide it. I wouldn’t ever dream of posing nude, or even wearing a low cut top because of it. I was even wearing my corsets high on my chest to hide it.

I hated the way it looked even though my lovers felt it was a symbol that I was still alive.

I even wanted to have it tattooed over. But scar skin doesn’t tattoo well. So my artist did a little bat tattoo where the wings went around the scar. The tattoo drew attention to the scar in a new way. The combination made the cancer scar look more like scarification.

The whole thing made me start to wear lower cut outfits. It also made me talk to people about the cancer and tell my story when people saw it.

The more I would talk about it, the more I got used to it.

I don’t hide it anymore, and even wear it as a badge of honor and survival.

An awareness ribbon is a sign of support for an issue or cause. The color, colors, and even patterns on an awareness ribbon have different meanings. It can sometimes be difficult or confusing because some colors have numerous, often completely unrelated meanings.

The pink awareness ribbon is clearly a universal and international symbol of breast cancer awareness. It is one we are all familiar with. There is no question when we see it. It evokes different emotions and even different meanings for each person. However, we do all associate it with breast cancer.

It most definitely symbolizes moral support and solidarity. It is worn by survivors, affected loved ones, and any one wanting to visibly show their support and commitment to the cause. The ribbon is also to show support for finding a cure and treatments.

Seeing someone wearing a pink ribbon often evokes some comfort for those affected, reminding them they are not alone. The emotional power of this visible expression of breast cancer awareness can even remind someone to stop procrastinating on getting a mammogram.

The pink ribbon may be in the form of a simple loop of ribbon, identifying the wearer as a supporter for breast cancer awareness and support. There are, however, unlimited options beyond the simple literal ribbon. The pink ribbon symbol can be in the form of jewelry, pins, bumper stickers, t-shirts, and more.

Pink is often interpreted as a female symbol. There is a less used, and lesser known pink and blue ribbon for male breast cancer awareness. The pink and blue ribbon does, however, have more commonly interpreted unrelated meanings. There is also a pink and teal ribbon, which symbolizes hereditary breast cancer.

In addition to awareness ribbons, there are now wristbands. The meanings of the colors of the wristbands correspond to the ribbons. Regardless of how we visibly express the pink ribbon, it holds the same general meaning for all of us.

So we have all seen the pink ribbons and every pink product on the market for supporting Breast Cancer Awareness. We have seen the tattoos, and the crazy crap out there on the market. Hey look, pink pepper spray, support the ta-tas! But, deep down, how many of us are actually doing our part to support the cause? And not just the cause, but the women (and men) we know who are currently battling this disease, who are currently in recovery from it, or the families who have lost someone because of it?

A woman who is very near and dear to me was battling Breast Cancer for the first time when I met her. She has two children, one around the age of seven, and one who was in her early teens. I was part of the religious community that she was involved with, and I became her nanny for a while. I grew to be very close to her and her children, and still am very close with them. About six months ago she discover another lump and found out that the cancer was back.

So, how do you show support? There are a number of ways (besides buying every pink thing that hits the market).

You could:

• Donate to the Susan G. Komen Foundation
• Race for the Cure
• In my case, show emotional support for a friend or family member.
• Learn more about Breast Cancer and its prevention and early detection, and let other women know about it.

Really, that list could go on for pages. Do a Google search and you will find hundreds of ways to support Breast Cancer Awareness, both locally and globally. During October there are tons of things going on, many in your local area! Also, don’t limit yourself to just October. This is an ongoing thing, it doesn’t just disappear once October has passed us by! If you are religious, pray to what ever higher power is in charge that we find a cure. Donate to your local support group. Keep up with ongoing research and and new breakthroughs. Most importantly, keep those who are going through dealing with cancer in your thoughts. Be sensitive to those who may have to lose one or both breasts. Granted, my friend was very good humored about having a mastectomy, but many aren’t. This is a life altering experience. It challenges our ideals of femininity and beauty, and for some it is one of the most challenging parts of the cancer treatment.

Also, I know it seems like I knocked the pink thing. I just feel that many of the pink for awareness products were ways for companies to cash in. So by all means, if that is how you choose to show your support, then do it! I have quite a few items that were bought pink because a portion of the sales went to Susan G. Komen Foundation (including a pink pepper spray). Just please do your research to make sure that they are actually donating a portion. Remember, support the Ta-Tas, and keep feeling yourself up!

Dear readers, this brain sludge puddle is a somber one.

On a long enough timeline, everybody gets cancer. If you live long enough, biology and statistics say that bad protein replication will eventually occur, creating cancerous cells. Which is scary, if all of us plan to live past 100 years.

But take into consideration the scarier fact, that one out of every eight women will develop invasive breast cancer in their lifetime. This is living on a normal timeline, without taking abnormal risks.

Breast cancer in American women is the most fatal of cancer diagnoses, and also the most common. One in four cancers diagnosed for an American woman will be breast cancer.

Now, you would think that given what media and common ignorance will tell you, that you either get killed by cancer, or you beat it and keep on going.

There are medications and radiation treatments, but they can’t possibly kill every cancer cell in a person’s body, they can’t even scan for individual cells. If you get treated, and you recover, the only way to tell whether or not you really beat it is to wait for it all to happen again. Some people are just genetically predisposed.

Though remission can happen at any time… Recurrences can happen at any time.

Hope… Can happen at any time.

My dear reader, I hope I haven’t clouded your mind or cast a shadow on your day. Remember there is always hope. Breast cancer is in the forefront of some great minds and hearts. There are research projects, charities with wonderful inspiring events, and there are most definitely, survivors.

… My friend Alisha is one of them.

She’s only 19 years old, and she is a breast cancer survivor. After all the pain and treatment, the struggle… One day when we were having lunch, she outright told me something that made us both double over laughing. After they’d removed a significant amount of her left breast, she’d woken up and thought, ‘Shit now I’m lopsided. Is there such a thing as a half priced boob job?’ That girl is amazing.

Some who may be reading this are also writers for Edencafe, and might’ve notice that this article seems a bit short. Well… Yeah. It is. I’m not doing this for any reason other than to just spread the word.

If you’d like to help, or maybe just learn a bit more about this issue. Please check out this site.
http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/

(As a younger man, it took a lot for me not to sully this piece with cheeky immature semi-perversion… But now that I finished I might as well. I love breasts. And would love if every boob on the planet was healthy and cared for. Join the fight for yabos my friends!)

My former partner Max came back from Iraq a different person. She was quieter, and often moody. I often wanted to ask what had happened over there to change her from the loud mouthed and cocky person she had been, into the person that she was when she returned, but the answer was always painfully obvious—combat had done it.

She was less inclined to want sex, or play. She would go out at night onto the front porch and drink in silences so deep it made the sound of the television in the living room feel lonely. I was always afraid when she did that, but I never knew what to say to her to try to help make things okay. I knew she wasn’t okay, but I wasn’t okay either, really. She had been gone from me for nearly a year and a half, and honestly it was like she had not even come back.

There was no way we could stay together. I kept putting off telling her so, because I was afraid my leaving would be the last straw, and I didn’t want to be the thing that caused her to slide all the way into the depression she was struggling with. We lay side by side in our bed at night, staring at the ceiling, and rarely spoke about anything at all. I could feel the heat of her body, but she rarely held me, or let me hold her. It was brutal.

One night she turned to me as I lay there staring at the plaster on the ceiling and the shadows on the walls, she said, “Touch this.”

I looked down and she had her hand over her heart. I hesitated, Max was stone—she never let me see her naked, never wanted me to touch her in a way that was feminizing. For her to want me to touch her breast was so extraordinary that I had no ability to process the request.

Her warm honey-gold hand closed over mine and then my fingers were on her. I could feel the thin cotton of her tank top, and under that, her breast. It was soft and malleable, like mine except that there was some pebble hard thing in it, right under the skin of it. It wasn’t her nipple, though at first I thought it was, it was too close to her armpit to be that.

Cancer. That thought slammed into me. The dreaded word; the feel of a lump under my fingers. I felt instant terror. I wanted to snatch my hand back and wash it in case it was contagious. I wanted to say everything would be okay. I didn’t know what to do. A superstitious certainty that if I said it it would be true, took over my brain.

“I think it’s a lump.” Max said, and I swallowed hard, wishing she had never said it, or that I had, because I knew I should have had the guts to. That deep down, that was why she had put my hand on a place she held apart from me, she had needed something, and I had failed her.

“Have you gone to the doctor?”

“No. I thought it was a bruise maybe, you know from the gym.”

Max was a fanatic about her body. She worked out relentlessly and loved to practice different types of martial arts. It could have been a bruise, I grabbed that idea and ran with it.

“Maybe you got hit in the chest and didn’t notice it. Maybe you just need to get a shot or something. Maybe it is just a little blood clot and they could cut it right out or something, you know, it’s probably exactly something like that.” I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t help it.

“I think it’s cancer. My mom and aunt both had it, so it’s possible.”

I knew she had lost her mom at a young age, and had been raised by her father. I had never thought to ask her why her mom had died. It had seemed impolite and nosy to ask, so I just never had. But right then I felt pissed off, pissed at her for having a genetic time bomb in her body that she had not told me about, and pissed at myself for being so selfish and only thinking about myself.

We just laid there for the rest of the night, not talking about the lump, about us or anything else, and I finally went to sleep wondering what to do when everything suddenly goes right off the rails in your life, and what I would do if Max died.

Four days later we sat in a cold exam room. Max’s face was tense and haggard. Neither of us had been sleeping, and she had been drinking even more. She was losing weight, and she had totally stopped going to the gym. Her eyes were puffy, and I knew it was because she spent half the night crying, but she would lock herself into the bathroom and away from me so that I couldn’t see her. She was the butch, and to her that meant she was supposed to be strong, and being strong did not mean crying in front of her girl. Because she would not let me see her cry, I could not find a way to comfort her, and by the time we sat in that room we had become strangers to each other.

Honestly, I didn’t know her at all. She was someone I used to know, it was like running into an old high school flame in the aisles of the supermarket. It was awkward and stilted, and I kept wondering what we had ever had between us, and I knew she felt the same. We just didn’t know how to fix it.

When the doctor pulled down her gown I saw her breast for the first time in our entire three year relationship. It was beautiful. The flesh of it was that tawny color of the rest of her skin, the nipple was just a bit darker. That nipple hardened as the doctor’s hands touched and prodded, and went limp when the needle went it.

I looked up from Max’s breast and she was staring right at me. She was not a stranger any more, she was a real live breathing woman. One who had taken me to Six Flags and who had held my hand after a ride on the Ninja left me sick and puking, who had held me tightly as I cried into the collar of her BDU’s the day she left for combat. She had always been there for me, and I had let my fear and anger keep us apart.

No, she wasn’t the same woman, and no, maybe we couldn’t stay together, but she was someone I owed a debt of love to. And I knew she trusted me because she was allowing me to see her breast, see it bared and vulnerable in a way she had never done before.

I got up and went to her. I held her hand, and she put her face into the cup of my palm, resting her cheek there. She began to cry, and I pulled her face to me, against my own breasts, and she lay there like a tired infant.

“I’m a butch dyke, dammit.” Max sobbed. “What will I be if they take my tits? I mean, I know I’m stone, but I’m still a woman. What will I be then?”

“You’ll be Max.” I said. “It won’t matter to me if you have them or not, you will still be Max to me.”

“Thanks,” she said and then asked me to turn my back while she got dressed.

It wasn’t cancer. We didn’t stay together either. Max still talks to me from time to time, and we never mention the moment that I saw her breast, or the way her body had shuddered and trembled while she cried in my arms. She’s a stone butch, those things are private. But I check my breasts monthly, and today, looking at my Daddy and thinking about the mammogram appointment he has Thursday at 11:00 in the morning, I feel a little afraid.

Is this the price I will always pay to love women? Knowing it is not just my breasts but theirs that are at risk? I wouldn’t change it, but I am aware of it. And I will always be aware of it. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but every month my fingers shake a little as I explore the contours of my breasts. But I check them anyway-and now that I am in my forties, I go and get that hated mammogram and make sure Daddy goes too. I have to. I can’t spend nights staring at the ceiling wondering ever again.

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The women in my family are equally strong as they are weak. What has always been strange to me is how alike they are, and yet fight so hard to be separated from one another and better than the next. Watching this going on as a child always bothered me. There were questions that I had about myself, and when I watched them live their lives, I saw my answers. I just never heard my answers vocalized.

I don’t know at what point I learned of my grandmother’s breast. I knew she was always sad. I knew that she constantly did things to improve herself that left her worse off than what she was. I remember finding empty vodka bottles stashed throughout the house. And I remember when I answered the phone to be greeted by my grandfather’s mistress. But I cannot pinpoint the moment that I saw the source of her unhappiness.

One day I was being my usual pain in ass, and in the way, childish self. My grandmother was shedding her burgundy polyester nurse pants and white polo. I saw the sweat belt she always wore under her clothes to hold in her flabby tummy. But as my eyes wandered up, I caught a glimpse of a prosthetic breast. It was an oval mass that I wanted to grab and squeeze, but instead I blurted out something that she overlooked because of my age. It is all kind of hazy now, but I do recall her saying that I knew she was missing a breast and needed to stop acting like I had no clue, and cease with the questions.

The thing is, that I never knew, and she never explained it to me. Things were said here and there on occasion. But no-one ever sat down and really told me that she was missing a breast. After my first encounter with the fake breast, I watched her chest more and more. I tried to hide my curiosity, but I am sure that she knew that my innocent eyes investigated every inch of her chest. The next time that I got a glimpse of her chest I saw the scar, and it was then that I truly realized that her breast was completely gone.

The scar appeared jagged and poorly done. But I was looking at it through the eyes of a child, and my memory too is that of a child. In my mind, I traced along the scar with my small fingers, and in my mind she explained what had happened to her. But in reality, I only saw it for a brief second, and she never went into details.

I believe that it was my mom who explained it to me, and even that conversation was encrypted. At first, I was simply told that she had cancer. Then I was told that there was a lump in her breast. Then I was told that my grandmother found the lump some time before she went to the doctor. This is where the confusion really hit because gammy was a nurse. Even then, my mind couldn’t wrap itself around the fact that as a nurse she procrastinated for so long to the point that the only choice left was to take her breast.

See, for some reason I always assumed that they took her breast because back then that is what they did. When the whole story came about, I was made aware that out of fear she ignored what she knew was true; there was a lump in her breast, and it was due to cancer.

What we never talked about was the emotional aspect of cancer. What it did to my grandmother reached far beyond the jagged scar across her chest. When she looked in a mirror she no longer saw a woman. She saw deformed being unworthy of being loved. Because she thought that she was unworthy of being loved, she accepted whoever came into her life proclaiming false love. Because she thought that she was unworthy of being loved, she pushed her children far away from herself and pitted them against each other. That thing, that cancer, took away her being.

We never wore pink ribbons or goofy hats to celebrate her life, which God spared. We never participated in any marches or told her story to offer inspiration. We never acknowledged the bright side of things, or how grateful she was. Instead we functioned as if it didn’t exist, and the few moments of my life that one of the women in my family acknowledged it by accident, we brushed it off like we heard nothing. It was as if the cancer was back all over again; a plague over our house.

The women in my family now handle depression and much needed talks in the same regard as my grandmother did her breast. We simply do not talk. No-one ever once stopped to acknowledge what it did to the children. For years I felt up my breast worried that I would find a lump. At 10, I was reading how to give myself a breast exam in the shower.

Some of us have gotten cysts or benign masses in our breast and other regions. And all of us react the same when we find out. In panic. But to this day, they don’t talk about it. Instead they would rather pit each other against one another, and brag about whose kid is the best. Meanwhile, we all have had some type of medical issue that rules our lives for the time it remains with us.

Funny thing is that cancer doesn’t care who’s kid graduated from college or won the spelling bee. Cancer cares not if we are rich, married, have a house full of kids, or a lesbian like me. And yet they still won’t talk. I want to scream at them, “Just speak, damn it!”

Instead I am forced to use deductive reasoning and piece together just how it destroyed my grandmother’s self image. And I’m sorry, but I don’t see commercials that talk about how it destroys families. However, once there was an episode of “Law & Order” that covered the subject. But maybe we don’t see those type of commercials because it is the people who destroy the family unit and not the cancer.

Cancer didn’t make my grandfather cheat because he couldn’t have sex with his wife and saw her as deformed. Cancer didn’t make my grandma dye her hair red to try and please her husband, or become a hording closeted drunk. Cancer didn’t invade their throats and make them not talk. Cancer didn’t turn my grandma into the senile, unhappy, hunchbacked woman she is today. They did it to themselves. The cancer was just an unwelcomed edition.

I love the women in my family, although they suffer from something far worse than cancer. But I hate the cancer. I wonder if maybe my grandma would have never gotten it would her mother have loved her more, and then showed her how to love her own kids. And maybe, just maybe, my mom wouldn’t be exhibiting the same symptoms as her mother did that kept her from loving her children.

Everyday this month, for the first time, I have worn a pink ribbon. I have gotten a mammogram earlier than the normal age to receive them. I talk to my daughter, and I have shown her how to check for lumps. I even check myself in the shower with a little more knowledge than I had when I was 10. Maybe the cancer played some part in the destruction that went on before I was born. But I will not allow cancer to taint my own family. Thanks grandma for the lesson…

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