Why do I dislike pink ribbons?

Tomorrow the company that I work for is inviting everyone to wear pink in support of breast cancer awareness. They are also throwing a party for two staff members who are breast cancer survivors. I wish that I could say that I can throw myself into these activities with gusto; and support these efforts wholeheartedly.   I'm afraid that instead I feel jealous and just a tad bit irritated at the attention that breast cancer gets. I just can't help thinking, "Why doesn't thyroid cancer get this attention!"

The funny thing is that there isn't a reason for me to have this knee-jerk reaction against breast cancer awareness.  If one looks at the numbers it shouldn't be hard to understand why breast cancer gets so much attention and thyroid cancer gets little.


 Breast Cancer Estimates
288,130 Women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.
39,510 women will die from breast cancer.

Compare that with
Thryoid Cancer Estimates
44,670 people diagnosed with thyroid cancer
1,690 people will die from thyroid cancer. (97% 5 year survival rate.)

Basically, almost as many women will die from breast cancer as the totality of diagnoses for thyroid cancer.  Not to mention the almost insanely high survivor rate. So my dislike of breast cancer awareness cannot be derived by a sense of misappropriated attention. Considering the numbers involved I would be hard pressed to rationalize giving as much attention to thyroid cancer as breast cancer. It affects far fewer people and those that it does afflict generally are better off than those with breast cancer.  They do need more awareness and more money than thyroid cancer does.

On the other hand. Breast Cancer has accepted and effective modes of treatment and monitoring. A lot of other cancers aren't nearly as easily found nor do they have as effective treatments. Yet, the Breast Cancer Awareness movement brings in $600 million dollars a year to fund breast cancer research. That is more than the research gains of Hodgkin's, pancreatic, lung cancer, and several other cancers combined. All of which would benefit immensely from the increased income.

The problem is that while I understand this rationally; emotionally I still want to cry out."I had cancer too! It sucks! Throw me a party!" It's not going to happen. Instead, I'll go run the breast cancer 5k's, I'll wear pink to support breast cancer. (Unobtrusively of course.) All while telling myself that fighting cancer is fighting cancer; not matter the type.