Columnist Sophie Kruse uses Breast Cancer Awareness Month to talk about medical advancements that have personally affected her.
I’m going to take this week to step away from regular Gamer Girl columns and discuss a branch of technology I have surprisingly never touched on: medical technology. Like many of you, this means a lot to me because it hits close to home.
My freshman year at OU, I found out my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though it was still at stage one, she had an aggressive form that required two surgeries to remove the tumors, followed by six weeks of radiation.
My mom is incredibly lucky: she’s been cancer free for two years, didn’t have to receive chemotherapy treatments and was able to pretty much go on normally about her life when going through radiation. Today, all she is left with are a nasty scar and a required pill to take — which we’re all pretty thankful for. My heart is with each of you that have a family member going through cancer.
Because of this, I feel grateful everyday for how advanced we have become in terms of medical technology. While there are (sadly) an endless number of cancers that I could be talking about, for the sake of this column I’ll stick with breast cancer. Through a series of early testing procedures, my mom was diagnosed and was able to be treated quickly before it spread or became even more aggressive. For her, it was through a mammogram.
For others, more advanced tests may be needed. One of the more advanced is BRCA testing, which came under the public eye after Angelina Jolie’s 2013 New York Times op-ed. It is a pretty amazing genome test that checks for mutations in your genes. If a woman has a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation, she’s highly likely to later be diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer. While the test is pretty costly (about $3,000,) it’s a lifesaver for many women and men.
According to new research by the American Cancer Society, death rates for breast cancer among women has dropped 35 percent since 1990 — a number I find pretty spectacular. BRCA testing is just one of the advancements we have for breast cancer alone.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. While you might think the “think pink” trend is a little overblown, try to keep in mind the fact that the more awareness there is for the disease, the more funds there are to keep the research going. Sure, not every product ever created needs to have a pink ribbon slapped on it, but I’d like to think that this is the companies' and consumers' way of helping out.
I hope we get to the point where all forms of cancer can have as much research put toward the cure so we can have more survivors as lucky as my mom. While cancer research may not be a game console or a new phone, I’d give it all up if we could further develop these technologies and have more people as lucky as my mom.
Sophie Kruse is a senior studying journalism and minoring in business and marketing. What medical technological advancements do you think are helpful? Email her at sk139011@ohio.edu or tweet her @kruseco.
