Today is Halloween, so I’ve decided to say Boo…and now scare you with something totally different.

Reading Chelsie Girl’s post on cancer has inspired me to write my own post. Imitation, it’s the highest form of flattery.

Today is the last day of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breast cancer is something that’s been a part of my family’s history long before I was introduced by a sperm to an egg. My grandmother’s oldest sister was dead by the age of 32 because of breast cancer. 20 years later her middle sister followed her oldest sister’s lead. And right around my grandmother’s 50th birthday, she too came face to face with the disease. She found the lump herself. Ironically, she had just returned from a visit to her neighborhood gynecologist, and he had found nothing. The visit inspired her to feel around some more, and that’s when she found what she found.

It was in an early stage, and she was lucky.

She didn’t have to share the same fate as her two sisters, well, yeah eventually we all do, but at least not early in her life, and at least not because of breast cancer. She detected the cancer early enough to make a different decision.

Radiation or elimination.

She opted to do something I think most women would look at as drastic, even if it’s not really. She chose to lose a breast, to have a masectomy. She never had chemo. Never touched radiation. Instead she cut it off. Her right breast. Gone. No rebuilding. No silicone. Just a flat slab of skin where her D cup once proudly hung.

As a child I remember learning about my grandmother’s missing breast, and I remember thinking that it was some big, dark family secret, one that only I knew about (well, and my grandmother and grandfather). I didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t speak of it with my cousins, my mother, father or siblings. I never even understood that she actually had survived a situation that was life or death. I just thought she was special, and now, in knowing, so was I.

My grandmother is now 80 years old. She’s watched a lot more of our relatives die of some form of cancer or other, but she’s still around. The only thing she lost was that breast, and truthfully I don’t think it had much effect on her relationships with other people or herself. My grandfather worshipped her until he couldn’t remember to worship her any longer (yay alzheimers!). She never felt different or ugly or alone.

Breast cancer is totally serious, but we already know this. Even though the month is over, when’s the last time you got checked, or checked yourself? Men too should check themselves. It’s not very often that a man gets breast cancer, but it can happen.

I, for one, take the time to feel my lumpy breasts, as often as I remember to do it (the best time is the same time every month, and that’s a few days after your period). And I visit my gyno at least once a year, even though I don’t fully trust her to find the lumps if they should ever exist. Even if I forget to check sometimes, I’m totally all about awareness. Hope you are too.