Writing from my hospital bed having chemo, reading paper and there is a big piece by the woman named above talking about breast cancer, the causes that are being cited as responsible and societies fault in causing woman to die from this disease.
Apparantly we should all be supported by society to get pregnant, and not be stressed enough by life causing us to have a glass or two of wine!
I am bloody fuming. She states things like ‘being two people is pretty damned stressful. I am sure this explains why a third of woman drink higher than recommended levels of alcohol and risk wholly avoidable breast cancer’
Wholly avoidable! I am so angry at bullshit it’r my fault i’m dying articles like this
Oh. If only I’d stuck to one unit of alcohol a day and had a baby and breastfed it and ate lots of fruit and veg and exercised for 30 minutes a day I wouldn’t be in this position.
I totally agree it makes me so angry, not only do they trivialise our disease but they blame us too. I am also not happy that on the first page of our webside we have the headlines under latest news. “A healthier lifestyle could prevent breast cancer” - with a link to the Daily Mail article. Surely our site should not be promoting this cr@p.
I hate this insidious business of attaching some sort of ‘blame’ to us. Bad enough to have this filthy disease without being told it is “wholly avoidable”. I know what I would like to do to that journo! Fact is that many women who live a healthy lifestyle are diagnosed and many who live anything but a healthy lifestyle do not get bc.
Grrrrr.
This story was the headline in the Mail yesterday what I think she is saying is dont blame overworked mothers for this cruel disease.
I certainly don’t blame my lifestyle on me getting and dying of this disease. Had two children didnt breast feed although I have ample breasts all my life they did not produce the milk when required! Ran very busy pubs for 14 years this gave me the workout that shoulb be considered healthy but maybe I spoilt it at the end of the day with the 3or4 vodka tonics that I drank! The only time I became overweight was once I started the treatments for bc. Today the paper tells us to drink more milk yesterday we were told to drink less. They don’t have a clue.
Love Debsxxx
Hi everyone, thanks for your comments, have calmed down a wee bit now, but still. It’s the ‘wholly avoidable’ comments that get to me.
I couldn’t have kids, would have loved to have them but was not able to carry a baby to term, after ectopics and misccariages and going down the IVF route, it wasn’t meant to be. By her reckoning, maybe that was my fault to in some way too, something about my lifestyle that caused my inability to be a real woman and protect myself from breast cancer, maybe I deserve it.
I just hate that people reading rubbish like that will look at people like me and think ‘she must have overdone it on the booze or something, what a shame’ because spreading trash that breast cancer is wholly avoidable by not drinking is bull.
Some of us get it and manage to get through it, some of us get it and don’t, but none of us are to blame for getting this sh** disease, never ever.
These articles are such a load of tosh, the radio was full of it as well and they do nothing but encourage the blame culture. I breastfed all my 3 kids for nearly a year each, I’m not overweight, don’t smoke and run half marathons in my spare time but getting BC is still my fault - apparently…
Yes, I’m fuming too!!!
This kind of media rubbish we don’t need especially for people like Nikki who are unwell. No wonder there are such alot of myths about BC. I have done all the ‘wrong’ things smoked, ate rubbish but that does not mean I am to ‘blame’ for my cancer.
Yep I did all the right things too and still got this bloody disease. I had the mirena coil put in and I’m blaming that!!! Maybe she should have stuck that in her report too!! Fact is they don’t know really what causes it.
Total and utter rubbish ; it should be ritually burnt, I agree the wholly avoidable is total b*llox. All these research papers do is allow our peers and neighbours to point a finger and say she did something to get BC - well whoopdy blo*dy doo, breathing gives you cancer if you happen to work in a coal mine, @ a nuclear plant or in a polluted atmosphere! Fumming in Wales!
I have asked my oncologist each time I visit whether alcohol will affect my chances of breast cancer returning and she has said categorically no. For someone who has never had breast cancer, reducing “risky” behaviour is clearly a good idea, not just to reduce the risk of bc, but a whole load of other health issues too. But those of us who have been “blessed” with the dodgy genes, then adopting healthy behaviour in the hope that it will prevent a recurrence or secondaries is not likely to happen. This is not to say that I advocate an unhealthy lifestyle - far from it as keeping slim and active, not smoking, drinking moderate alcohol is obviously good for us, but is not going to be a miracle.
This silly woman has completely misinterpreted the article yesterday which says that some bc may be attributed to unhealthy behaviour, but nowhere does it say that it is wholly responsible. Just poor journalism - if she wants to launch a counterargument in favour of stressed out women who reach for the bottle etc, then she should read the original more carefully.
I have taken 2.5 yrs off work to raise my kids and i breastfed them for a yr (8mths for the little one as I FOUND MY LUMP IN PREGNANCY AND WAS DIAGNOSED POSTNATALLY!!)
Sooooo ladies, Ive done the “right thing”, taking time to raise my babies and being bloody hard up because of it and i breastfed exclusively. Im a stone over weight-nothing major. So why do i have cancer then?! Just because i do, thats just the way my cookie crumbled.
Articles like this one should not be published because they are drivel.
I eat healthy, DONT drink the recommended glass of wine a day (does that make me unhealthy??), I breast fed my son, I’m a busy mum that has a full time job and a house to keep (I count this as my exercise??) therfore I am not overweight… the ladies that i met during and after my treatment (25 + ladies), were also healthy, careful ladies. Now scientists claim that over 40% of ladies who are dealt with bc have it because of unhealthy lifestyles and are obese!! Maybe these ‘scientists’ should look into what has been added to the food that we eat, the pollution that this overcrowded island has to live in, and all the other nasties that are in the air, water and food…maybe then they can find a plausible cause for cancer instead of blaming the ‘victims’ of this soul destroying disease!!!
We have enough to contend with during and after treatment without being told we are to blame!!
Outrageous. Horrible article. This is so much insult to injury. I hate the Daily Mail. I hope an oncologist or two replies to this rubbish. It will soon be some sort of admission to ‘bad living’ to say we’ve had breast cancer. Makes me want to scream…
x
I have also lived a healthy life and done everything right to reduce the risk of getting bc (albeit largely unwittingly). The only risk factor I had was that I hadn’t gone through the menopause (I was 52 ad dx). Not much I could do about that one!!!
It annoys the hell out of me that healthy living is seen as a panacea for everything. Yes, it’s good to live healthily - you’ll feel better if nothing else. But it won’t necessarily prevent you getting all sorts of nasties - breast cancer included.
You would think walking on the pavement would keep you safe, but if a car mounts the pavement and crashes into you, would the press say it was your fault?
I too am sick of the victim blaming this sort of journalism perpetuates. Living a healthy lifestyle is very difficult for many people for a whole load of reasons and to keep pointing the finger saying its their own fault they have cancer, high blood pressure, strokes, heart failure etc is so wrong. OK, if you are morbidly obese, smoke and drink vast amounts of alcohol then you are on a death wish, but for most of us, this is not the case and our good health is attributed to being given good genes or vice versa if we have bad health. My son had cancer as a baby and I have learned that the tumour would have started growing from conception. No-one could have been more careful than me during pregnancy and prior to conception and this was certainly the case with other mothers/fathers who also had children with cancer. The cause of many cancers, especially in the young, remain a mystery, so I have long ago given up asking why.
This upsets me too…
I don’t drink much, a couple of glasses at night at the weekend and not even every weekend, had my first son before 30 (just!), breast fed for 8 months, had another son 13 years later breast fed him for 7 months, didn’t use contraception, exercised all my life, am the right weight for my height, good BMI and very healthy diet as am lactose intolerant and we eat carefully because my husband is predisposed to heart problems. I do work hard as I’m self employed but took time off with both boys and I worked as a distraction from the ectopic and miscarriages I had over the years. My periods started at 9 and therefore my body has been exposed to oestrogen for a long time (I’m now 46) I guess that’s all my fault…der!
This was not just in the Daily Mail, I object strongly to it. All I will say with statistics and research, choose who and where and when and you will get the necessary ‘answer’ you want. You can minipulate collected data to suit. Have they examined pollutions etc in the areas that were included in the research. Just one of the things that could and would upset their findings!
Sorry, if you don’t smoke, are not an alcoholic, not morbidly obese they need to look at other things they can acuse us of to cause us to have breast cancer!
Hey ho I just needed months off work to get back some of the money I have paid into the system since I was 16yrs old.
Time to shut up now as I am starting to write a book, and yes I am having my second glass of wine diluted with soda of the evening. OK whoever did the research, I BLOODY WELL DESERVED IT!!!
Just ask my children and my grandchildren they will tell you different.
Arrrghhhh!!! Angry of Buckingham here felt moved to post a comment following that article. My blood is boiling, but then I guess the Daily Mail does specialise in inflammatory journalism designed to make middle England all hot under the collar. I might just have to go & pour myself a glass of wine now
