As the calendar flips to October, no doubt we’ll be seeing a flood of pink. After all, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Not surprisingly, though, those of us who have dealt with breast cancer might have a complicated relationship with this “celebration.” It’s not really festive for us. We’ve lived through it, and while many people bandy about the terms “survivor” and “warrior,” some of us just don’t feel those apply.

Cancer is a tricky disease, one that messes with a person’s mind as much as it does the body.

I was broadsided by breast cancer in 2019. It wasn’t on my radar. I was at the doctor’s office for a different problem when the nurse practitioner said, “Do you know you have a lump on your right breast?” I could hardly register those words at all.

In fact, when she handed me an order to get a diagnostic mammogram, she folded the paper and gently said that I shouldn’t wait on it. It was only when I got home that the reality started to sink in.

I suppose I can be forgiven for being less than thrilled when another doctor confirmed that the lump probably was “malignant.” I had spent the previous year dealing with the death of my mother, who had come to live with me when she developed dementia, and my husband was in the early stages of his Alzheimer’s disease. This was one more thing that I didn’t want to deal with.

I underwent a double lumpectomy to remove the tumor on my right side and suspicious calcifications that were detected on my left side. Then I underwent 22 radiation treatments on my right side.

After that, I started on a course of estrogen suppression to help my cancer from coming back. If I had made it to five years, I would have been declared cancer-free.

Sadly, that was not to be. In February 2024, new suspicious calcifications were detected on my left side during a routine mammogram. They wound up being more cancer.

That meant another lumpectomy, which turned into two when my surgeon wanted to go back in to get better “margins,” which ensured that she got all the bad stuff out.

Another 22 radiation treatments, this time on my left side, were completed. And I went back on another estrogen-suppression medication.

If this all sounds like an ordeal, it was. However, my tumor was Stage 1; everything else was Stage 0. My situation never rose to “warrior” level, at least in my own mind.

A dear friend of mine who had a different kind of cancer who went through a chemotherapy treatment described as the “red devil” is a warrior. Hugs to all those real warriors.

Because of the nature of cancer, I really can’t be sure that I won’t someday become a warrior. If I get breast cancer again, the treatment options become more drastic and dire. But I’m trying to do what I can to prevent that.

If you’d like to do something for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the excellent resource Breastcancer.org offers these suggestions:

• If you know someone who is living with breast cancer or has been affected by the disease, check in with them to ask how they’re doing.
• Schedule your annual mammogram. Encourage your friends and family to do the same.
• Learn more about breast cancer and how it affects people’s lives from Breastcancer.org’s news, educational content, podcasts and more.
• Join community discussion forums to ask questions or connect with others. Breastcancer.org also hosts multiple virtual support groups each week.
• If you’d like to support breast cancer research and programs that support people living with breast cancer, consider donating directly to organizations that do this work.

Statistics show that a woman has a 1 in 8 chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime and a 1 in 43 chance of dying from breast cancer. In the United States, there are about 4 million breast cancer survivors, including those of us who are undergoing cancer treatment.

This October, I’m doing what I can to embrace the pink of it all, but just like cancer, my relationship to this awareness effort can be a little complicated.

• Joan Oliver is the former Northwest Herald assistant news editor. She has been associated with the Northwest Herald since 1990. She can be reached at jolivercolumn@gmail.com.