Friday, November 09, 2007

BREAST CANCER SITE AND OTHER THINGS

Well if you remember correctly when I began this last spell of blogging I did say I wondered how long I could keep it up. I’ve been ‘shown up’ horribly haven’t I? First of all I had surgery to my knee – and you all know how that stops one typing on a computer! Then I got another flu bug which laid me low for 3 days, hardly getting myself out of bed – and that also had an effect on my typing abilities. So you see I do have great excuses – if only they were the true reason. I’d say I’ve just been hugely lazy with this supposedly regular journaling. I’ll try to do better in future. But I do have to reiterate - I’m still wondering how long I can keep it up. Maybe those of you who know me could give me a gentle prod now and again to keep me going!

Recently a relative sent me a link to a
breast cancer website where all one has to do is click a pink button and hey presto, a paid mammogram has been given for somebody who is unable to afford one. I thought this was a great idea and immediately went to the site and clicked away. I sent this link to my contacts by email and really expected that some of them would probably also ‘give by clicking.’ I had one unexpected reply however which simply pooh-poohed the whole thing. It set me back a bit I’ve got to say and I had to question whether the website was legit and really did what it claimed to do. How do you find out about these things? Do you just keep ‘clicking away on a daily basis’ to keep the mammograms rolling out? Well, I’ve got to say I’ve been doing that – despite the tiny niggle in the back of my mind which says it may be a futile exercise. But then my positive thoughts begin to crowd out the negative ones and I reckon a click on a pink button is probably worth doing – there’s always a chance that it actually does provide for some women who otherwise wouldn’t have that opportunity to check for a life threatening condition.

The same thing I guess applies to ‘giving a pink ribbon’ on some other popular websites. This particular application hopes to reach the 3 million ribbons being given, attached to messages or emails. If nothing else, at least these are reminders of what a threat breast cancer can be to many thousands of women each year and helps us to remember and promote this fact through our blogging, messaging, or emailing.

Does anybody out there in cyberspace land know if there’s a similar thing going for men’s prostate cancer?