Don't delay breast-cancer screenings

Wall Street is Woe Street. Your investments are on a long, down arrow. Your retirement fund is in ruins. Nothing is seemingly safe, including your own job. Can things be any worse?

Yes, they can.

You can eventually recover money. But you can never get back the life you've lost to cancer. This disease kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, including victims of breast cancer. An estimated 1,700 women will die from breast cancer in Illinois this year, according to most recent state public health statistics.

But there is reason for hope in the grimness of those statistics.

The fact is, early detection of breast cancer, before symptoms occur, can save lives. When breast cancer is discovered in its early treatable stage, the five-year survival rate from this disease is 98 percent. On the other hand, the survival rate drops to 26 percent when the cancer progresses and is diagnosed too late. That is one of the reasons why every October is declared National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

One of the main goals in building awareness of the disease is stressing the importance of early screening. Take time this month to talk with your wife, your mother, your daughter, your sister about breast cancer and ask them if they have been screened through a mammogram, the best means of detecting the disease in its early stages. Don't accept the answer no, with accompanying unacceptable explanations of "I'm too busy" or "It's not really necessary."

Also get to learn as much as you can about the disease, such as understanding breast cancer risk factors, including increasing age and a family history of breast cancer. Knowledge saves lives, too.

Sadly, there is one explanation for not getting a mammogram. That is, when it's not affordable. But even here, there is help. Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been rightly criticized for expanding the state health-care system without a means of paying for it, and sometimes without the clear authority to do so. But the governor deserves praise for giving all women in Illinois a fair chance to fight breast cancer by offering free breast and cervical cancer screenings to women who do not have health-care insurance.

Nearly 78,000 women have taken advantage of free screenings through the Illinois Breast and Cervical Cancer Program, which can be reached at 1-888-522-1282.

If past statistics are a good barometer, almost 9,000 women in Illinois will be diagnosed with either breast or cervical cancer this year. But as is being emphasized this month, the diagnosis of breast cancer does not have to be a death sentence. Early diagnosis, coupled with advancements in treatment, can give women hope for years of life beyond that dreadful day when they are first told they have breast cancer.