Isn’t it bad enough that a woman gets breast cancer without others beating the victim by deciding that somehow she must have brought it on herself?
Isn’t it bad enough that a woman gets breast cancer without others beating the victim by deciding that somehow she must have brought it on herself?In a recent breast cancer awareness presentation at a post secondary school, a student in her late 30′s, shared that she had attended a funeral in the previous Saturday for a cousin who died of breast cancer. She said, “I can’t help but wonder if my cousin could not have done more to prevent getting breast cancer.” It seems her cousin was 45 years old. Her cousin was a physically fit woman who exercised regularly, watched her diet, and didn’t drink or smoke.
I asked what she thought her cousin could have done that she was not already doing when diagnosed. Another student spoke up, suggesting that it must have been in her family. Another student said,”Your cousin must have been doing something you weren’t aware of to get breast cancer.
Why beat the victim?
It was obvious that these students were trying to find reasons why this woman got breast cancer in order reassure themselves that it was something she did, not a random event that could happen to anyone. These students needed to believe that they could control whether or not they got breast cancer. What was sad was that they needed to beat the victim by making her responsible for her own fate.
My response made some of the students visibly uncomfortable. That was not my intent. I shared that while research tells us we may be able to reduce our risk of getting breast cancer by practicing a healthy lifestyle; a healthy life style is not a get out of jail free card when it comes to breast cancer. There are other factors, through no fault of our own, that make us vulnerable to breast cancer. Most students had never heard of the BRCA mutations.
