Breast cancer

I went to a discussion tonight that focused on the way breast cancer is viewed in Eastern Europe and in the former Yugoslavia. Women who get sick are stigmatized. It's not uncommon for their husbands to divorce them, their neighbors to refuse to touch them.

Apparently it's reminiscent of the United States some 40 years ago, before I have memories, when breast cancer was prevalent, but not spoken about and women suffered largely in silence and without nearly the range of treatment options we have today. 

The event focused on Susan G Komen,  which over that arc of decades has truly revolutionized the openness with which cancer is viewed. It looked at work that JDC is doing overseas.

Having had my mother suffer from cancer recently, and whose struggles were hard enough even with the kindness of family and strangers, and an aunt who died after five years of illness before I was born, I feel grateful to be living now, and here.

The program director in Bosnia is making measurable strides - you can see in very concrete ways the impact of education and support that she is almost single handedly leading, on the lives of countless individuals and on the society as a whole. I'm grateful to run into people like her too.