Ah, so... I've gone a little Dickens. Speed skim or outright ignoring is well understood, haha!
I've been trying to put together resources myself for this same reason (heck, my first post here was motivated by this same gripe). I'm slowly compiling a list for friends and family as I learn and experience. Things to do and know, and what to avoid doing or saying. I just couldn't find one of these "How to help your friend with cancer" articles that actually applied to me that I could pass on to friends as a guide and not have to go through the telling people ordeal on repeat.
I really hope it will end up useful to someone but I'm sure after I've been through it all that it will be just another page on the internet, so if you find anything pertinent in there once I'm done feel free to use it as one of your perspectives (I'll make sure I link it to you). Maybe you'll find the responses to that earlier post useful too. I'd love to participate in your project any way you find useful.
I want to say thank you for saying you want it out as a free resource too, despite the work you put in. I have a project underway I aim to have freely distributed to cancer patients too; early days but I have interested publishing parties and I'll hopefully have out around the end of the year as well. Why the thank you? My own gripe for the day was having a woman draw attention to herself because I tagged chemo in a post. She has completed compiling and publishing the volunteered feedback of around 50 women under the age of 45 on how to deal with chemotherapy. And sells the document - to chemo patients. *disappointed head-desk*
Mammography itself I think is still growing up as a technology, a decade or two more and it might be the go-to, but the detection benefit just isn't there yet for under 40. They can't see into dense young tissue. Even if the boob is a squishy pancake the scan comes out mostly a mess of white if you're under 40. Mine didn't show a large concentration of calcification they found during surgery. It that had been completely obscured by my own tissue in the scan. If that had been where the cancer originated and I'd been in for a check-up, no-one would have been able to see it. My actual tumor looked like standard polycystic change and wouldn't have sent up a red flag. It was because they could see heightened blood flow in an ultrasound and that I was sure it felt wrong that anyone bothered over it.
When I went in to get my lump checked the doctor gave me the same expression of disbelief that every following examiner would wear when they looked for it. They needed help physically finding it, but that isn't what was so remarkable to them. It was that I knew my body well enough to insist it wasn't "just glandular", and the fact that (and this still rings in my head) "It's really unusual for young people to check".
I had no idea it was unusual, and the idea of it filled me with - you know that breed of horribly wronged rage? I felt that on behalf of all the simply uneducated young people waiting on extreme symptoms to know. It still digs at me that I've been doing this for years, had this knowledge for so long but not shared it, just assuming it was a usual part of everyone's life.
I do want this taught in schools. Young people need to know their bodies. We could start up a petition to have it introduced to the PHE curriculum, scaffold around cancer awareness days to get conversations started?
Great rant Luna.
