Project Life is happy to share thoughts from our members. Read this from member Flori Hendron.
The artwork is her own.
It gets me every year
Feels like a gut punch
Here we go--inundated
Breast Cancer **awareness**
Pink News, Pink Ads, Pink Washing
Companies making PINK money
Using OUR Ribbons but not funding
OUR research for a CURE
WE are expected to fund our own cure
with runs and rallies
while Pharma spends our money
on finding more TREATMENTS
Because Treatments Equal Profits
Clinical Trials,
practically impossible to gain access
Especially if you have
Metastatic Breast Cancer
The kind that sticks around
Until it kills you
Clinical Trial Criteria
Carried over from one trial to another
Never a reflection of the actual people
Living with the actual cancer
Clinical trials, Hoop-jumps through fire
Schedules that work for them, not you
Randomized and double-blinded
No one can see straight
How I miss the Mundane World
And my life before those three shitty words:
You Have Cancer
Those words exploded right through me
Hit my family, Hit my friends
The mushroom cloud still darkens my days
My life would’ve been so much easier
If I’d only known that I would survive for 24 years!
But that’s not how cancer works.
You get three months at a time.
Scan to Scan. Check up to Check up
I’ve learned to live in
This is the Day I Am Given
Often scared when making plans
Always wondering
Will I be here to see milestones?
And here we go-Pinktober again
Raising our own funds
Moving the needle through
Unpaid Advocacy Work
Hash-tagging each other to death
Watching our friends die
And wondering if we’ll be next
A vaccine for COVID
But for Breast Cancer
Still NO CURE!
Pinktober © Flori Hendron 2021