It Takes A Village

It’s been a bustling week at our house! The kids have had friends sleeping over for much of the week. Generally, sleepovers aren’t the norm on school nights, but this week is an exception. For these are exceptional circumstances. Our young friends have each, within the last year, lost their mom to breast cancer. Two young men related only by tragic loss.

The young man sleeping on the blow-up mattress in my son’s room is staying while his dad is out of town on a business trip. Sleepovers have become familiar to him since his mom died. He needs a familiar place to stay when his dad is required to travel for work.

Earlier in the week, our other young friend was excited to sleep over. For him, about to turn six in a couple of days, sleeping at a friend’s house was a big adventure. The details as to why he was staying with us were lost on him. His mom, still grieving the loss of her life partner to breast cancer, was to leave very early the next morning to go to Mayo Clinic. She was scheduled for a PET scan to find out if the treatments she had been receiving for inflammatory breast cancer had been effective. The PET scan was to be a big determinant for what would come next in the lives of the people I love. That night was momentous. Some of us slept, blissfully exhausted. Others of us lay awake and wondered.

Tonight, after all the kids are safely tucked in their beds, I drink my tea and I can’t help but feel that this past week is merely a scene from a post-apocalyptic work of fiction. After all, how can so many people be so affected by this ugly disease? I have no choice, however, but to accept the reality of a 10-year old boy who, late at night, crawls from his bed crying for a mom that he will never see again. A mom he has lost to breast cancer. And I have no choice but to accept the reality of a boy who has very recently lost his adoptive mom to breast cancer and now, on the eve of his 6th birthday, faces the possibility of losing his birth mom to the same ugly disease. That same soon-to-be-six-year-old will soon lose his grandmother to cancer. His grandmother, who has cancer of the liver and the large intestine, has been given a week to live. The family suspects that the cancer started in the breast, but we don’t know for sure. Biopsies, diagnosis, and treatment have all been refused. Regardless, any day now, a little boy will lose yet another loved one to cancer.

Perhaps it is the apocalypse. The apocalypse of cancer.

At the end of World War II, a woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer in the United States was 1 in 22. Today, the risk is 1 in 8. 1 in 8! These statistics have very little to do with genetics and very much to do with environment and lifestyle. In fact, “the increasing risk of breast cancer and other cancers has paralleled the proliferation of synthetic chemicals since World War II.”(1) And, “after smoking, obesity is the highest preventable cancer risk.”(2) Sure, genetics play a factor. But, environment and diet and lifestyle are leading, preventable cancer risks. Statistically speaking, we have the capability to eliminate 2/3 of cancer!

It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child. In our village, where the well has been poisoned, we cobble together families to support each other and to help tend the motherless children. We do live in exceptional times. Apocalyptic times when cancer is no longer the exception, but the rule.

It’s time to change the rules.

Stay tuned.


1. http://tuftsjournal.tufts.edu/archive/2003/february/oped/index/shtml
2. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12856-obesity-increases-the-risk-of-cancer.html