Tracy
Oh dear indeed.
My beautiful son aged 28 years of age is dead now because of this disgusting disease, their is nothing pink or fluffy about this, he will never be coming home,never know what it is like to be blessed with a child and I will never hold him in my arms and tell him how much I LOVE him and always will.
A devastated mum xxxxxxxxxx
Tracey I donāt think your comments are fair and Iām sure I wonāt be the only secondary lady to take offence at your comments. The people who come out the other side Following a bc diagnosis are the lucky ones. Sadly I have not been so lucky (Iām also triple neg) + itās nothing to do with me ānot fighting it head onā or āseeing it as a death sentenceā (Sadly it was my onc who drew the latter conclusion). Iāve fought very hard + will continue to do so + itās naive to think that a positive, fighting atttude alone can beat cancer, Iām afraid.
Tina
Irene, Iām so very sorry to hear you have lost your son to this wretched disease, much too young, much too soon. With Loveā¦x
Agree, again, with Gingerbud, Iām not sure if I misinterpreted your message Tracey and I apologise if I have, but your post read to me that somehow our attitude will have an influence on our cancer, our tumours. All chemo eventually ceases to be effective whether we are positive or not has no effect on this. I have lost many brave, fiesty friends if only it were that simple they would still be here. 
irene.my thoughts are with u.i am a mummy with little ones.unlucky to get bc.hope i will be around to see my babies grow.if it wasnt thrown in folks face would they care?most probably no.until it touches your life u dont know.pink,blue, red!! flipping whatever colour??
I too have lost many friends over the years who have tried to fight this terrible disease and wanted to live to see their children grow up. They didnāt make it. Many were young, much younger than me.
People often tell me that it is my attitude that has kept me going. Absolute twaddle. You can have all the attitude, knowledge, information, do all the research you like, but that doesnāt mean you are going to conquer BC. Just before I got diagnosed 22 years ago, I lost a friend who had 4 children under the age of 9 and her husband was a GP.
I still get upset with the pink and fluffy fund raising slogan and no matter how much I get told it raises money, I just do not like the idea and that is that! I do help to raise money for Breast Cancer, I have helped with the āReach For Recoveryā ladies who visit the wards and clinics at our fantastic hospital in Edinburgh. I have even worked in the Cancer Research Shopā¦but the Pink and Fluffy Campaign still upsets me and I know I am not the only one who feel like this. Val
well put val, alex xx
Agree Val, as an 8 years with mets girl I have received similar commentsā¦yes itās all absolute twaddle. Iām just fortunate that, so far, Iāve had good responses to treatment.
I have responded well to treatments too Belinda and my goodness I have tried plenty of them! I also love the help and support I have found on this site and all the lovely friends I have made on here. When I got diagnosed in 1989 there were no sites like this around. I think that the younger ladies are much more knowledgeable than I was in the early years of BC.
But you learn as you go along and my mottos have always been āone day at a timeā and ālisten to your bodyā. In other words rest when you need to. I have had 12 years with bone mets and I think my Oncologist and GP are surprised I am still plodding on. I have got to the stage in life that I am amazed that I am still here. But I want to be around for a while yet! Love to all especially those who are struggling right now. Love Val
Irene so sorry about your son.
Belinda I agree totally (as usual).
Tracyā¦ re the attitude thingā¦pure crā¦! sorry. As belinda says, I have also seen many strong, feisty, exuberant and positive women lose their life. One of them being my 30 year Mother who was desperate to try anything and liveā¦
Pink and fluffyā¦mmm. We seem to be going round in circles. Please re-readā¦
julie x
What i donāt understand with this debate over pink and fluffy is why it causes so much contention.During my treatment for breast cancer i didnāt feel my friends and loved ones took my diagnosis any less seriously than if i had been diagnosed with any other cancer.They werenāt influenced by the campaigns to think any differently. These campaigns are an effective money raiser, they do not take away the seriousness and brutality of this disease.We are surely not giving the general public credit if we think that they are influenced by them to see breast cancer as a less serious disease.In my opinion the fundraising does not dumb down the disease.Breast cancer campaigns raise a lot of money and whilst i may only be a primary at this moment in time,i am well aware that this could change at anytime.I am also a mother of young children and i donāt want to leave them prematurely,therefore anything that raises money to fund research to help eradicate this disease has my backing.
Surely all that matters is that the money is there to fund the research.What i really care about is that people continue to want to give in the current economic climate to give their money to help fight a disease that i have suffered from and from which i might suffer again.
Juliet66 & other like minded posters
Agree, and it might well be taken offensively for those women who HAVE got a death sentence and who WILL be leaving children AND parents behind and for whom there are NO positives. State of mind has no effect on prognosis or outcome. It MIGHT mean you cope with treatment differently but there is no clinical evidence to say that positivity or negativity affect outcome and Iām not even sure if it really, deeply affects your coping. Some might outwardly appear chirpy whilst in deep despair inside.
Anyway, thatās veeering off topic ā¦
Iāve edited this now to remove āand co.ā and āpure drivelā.
Well put Anxious, no one Iāve met has belittled my illness. No one has said oh youāve got a fluffy disease. They all have expressed concern about what lies ahead. Tracey I also thing being positive is good. It doesnāt mean if your positive you will beat bc, donāt think anyone is naive to think that. But I do believe it canhelp you deal with the battle ahead. An onc of someone else I know said that inher professional life that the patient who have a positive attitude deal with the treatment better.
We all need to grab onto what ever works for us as individuals, with what we have to deal with.
Positivity can certainly help you get out of bed in the morning but it will not effect your outcome and that is the persistent myth that surrounds all cancers. If someone breaks a leg or has a heart attack they are not often told to remain positive. Some of us take our death sentence on board whilst remaining determined to live life to the full until we are no longer able to.
I question whether all the campaigning actually raises āawarenessā of breast cancer. Perhaps thatās not the point and the most important objective is to get the cash in. Point taken but more so now than when I first started using these boards (in Jan 2004) there seems to be less awareness of the seriousness of this disease. That, I think, is due to the pink froth. How many times have I read, have you read here of well meaning relatives or friends commenting well youāre all over that now, you had a free boob job, when do you get the all clear??..etcā¦etcā¦ How much awareness will it take for magazines, the Daily Mail to finally get the message there is no 5 year all clear from bc. A celebrity hasnāt beaten cancer just after their mastectomy.
Iām a chipper person, I have had a relatively good life after my secondaries diagnosis and I bl**dy love life but I will die young from this disease. No amount of positivity on my part can alter this fact.
Hereās a link to the ASDA websiteās discussion page relating to their use of āTickled Pinkā as a slogan to raise money for breast cancer. Have a read. And do remember lovely Debs in Cornwallās news video, when she spoke for a lot of us: āI wasnāt Tickled Pink when I was told I had secondary/incurable/terminal breast cancer . . .ā. Nothing about living with breast cancer is pink & fluffy.
And well said, Belinda (and others too) about the myth of āpositivityā helping us live longer.
xx
Again I agree Belinda, wholeheartedly.
I am not belittling being positive by any stretch of the imagination.
Determination, open mindedness and sheer human spirit are essential.
I have read all the stuff on āfighting spiritā and think it is relevant. Even with a secondary diagnosis positivity is absolutely necessary. If I were not positive I would not drag myself out of bed in the morning, continue to work and care for my daughter (despite feeling like death and crying in my head). I know I am not alone.
What we are saying is that positivity is all well and good. So many women on here have remained upbeat and positive until a day when they could not. Jaynemh who used to post, carried on joking laughing and working until 2 weeks before she died. Was it lack of positivity that killed her ??
In the pink, (the BCC campaign)
Meaning, to be in perfect condition, especially of health.
Tickled pink,
Meaning, to be delighted.
Thanks for the link Marilyn, I hadnāt read all those comments before.
Agree Julie, positivity has helped me cope with 3 years of Xeloda and will hopefully help carry me, at times, through the tougher IV chemotherapies.
Like Julie and others here Iām not knocking positivity, a fighting spirit, itās just that it has no effect on your cancer, no effect on whether a treatment works or fails and none of us can remain positive all of the time. Sometimes we need to acknowledge harsh truths and give ourselves a break.
I remember Jayne and Debs and so many others that remained determined until the very end.
I think the problem arises when people view the campaigns as a reflection of how people perceive the disease.It is felt that the pinkification somewhat trivalises the disease.However the fundraising and the disease are two very different entities.I have never seen anyone join these boards and say,"i have the pink and fluffy disease as well,anyone want to join me in having fun"No,everyone come onto these boards scared and apprehensive of what lies ahead.I quote from the Asda website,ā¦āAsda has raised Ā£20 million since we first launched Tickled Pink. This has helped Breast Cancer Campaign to fund 36 vital research projects and two scientific fellowships to carry out world-class research to better understand how breast cancer develops. It has also funded almost half of the services provided by Breast Cancer Care, a support service for people who have breast cancer.ā
That is a lot of valuable money that has helped all of us and continues to do so.What would happen if Asda decided to stop this campaign,would we all be happier?
Iām relieved to see I wasnāt just being over sensitive- I was genuinely upset to read that anyone could think it was a matter of āpersonal choiceā to have this death sentence over my head Ive just re-read miniminxās comments + Iām still shocked!
I think many valid points have been raised by belinda, val, Juliet + co. This disease is evil, indescriminate + so unpredictable. Many of us thought we had ācome out the other sideā after being positive + dealing well with treatments. But then cancer reared itās ugly head again when we were least expecting it, whether that be straight after treatment (like me), or 2, 5 or 10 years later. Iām sure the vast majority of us are fighting a good fight but itās not one we will winā¦
I agree that the pink campaigns are not successfully raising awareness about this deadly disease- Iām sick of hearing things like
āitās an older womans diseaseā (Iām 33!)
āitās genetic- you wonāt get bc if thereās no family historyā¦ā
āif your gona get cancer then bc is the one to getā¦ā
āat least you donāt need your boobsā
āpeople donāt die from bc any moreā¦ā
āhave u had the all clear nowā etc etc blah blahā¦
I think whilst successfully raising funds, the pink + fluffy stuff has trivialised the disease and wrongly made tge public believe itās not as deadly as it acually is. Maybe if at least some bc campaigns were more serious + showed the awful truth about bc, then people would be more aware, more women would regularly check themselves, there would be better attendance at screening etc. I also think gps would benefit from greater awareness as many of them still turn women away as they are ātoo youngā etc.
Iām not against pink- I like it and have nothing against the pink ribbon (although I really feel fore men diagnosed with this pink disease). I also wouldnāt mind the pinkness that surrounds it as much if there was at least some realstic portrayals of life with bc + the potentially devastating effects it can have, within the campaigns. It wouldnāt make people less likely to donate- you only have to look at the other charities to see that presenting distressing images can be very successful when fundraising. The aim is to make viewers feel personal distress as they are more likely to donate when they empathise with the victim but also bcause helping will ārelieve their own negative
stateā. (Iāve taught this- Iām a psychology teacher). So maybe even more funds would be raised if the public were faced with the awful truth about bc from time to time, rather than just the pink + fluffy stuffā¦?
Hi anxious, yes itās a fantastic amount of money thatās been raised.
Itās just that some of the merchandise, some of the slogans upset some of the people itās hoping to help and as gingerbud has said it has helped trivialise the seriousness of breast cancer. This pink debate has been going on, certainly on these forums, for a few years now along with debates about the Jane Plant approachā¦Iām not going there. 
And perhaps, in the end, itās okay to use this approach to raise such a large amount of money whilst upsetting some with the tackier and tickled part? I still donāt like that part one bit little bit but thatās me. I do think, still, that the public would still give as generously to more thoughtful campaigns.