My endocrinologist had never been so insistent. “Please get a mammogram,” he told me. “Don’t be deceived by reports of a reduction in cases of breast cancer,” he said. “It’s not the incidences that have been reduced, it’s the amount of women who are actually getting mammograms.” Too many cases are going undetected.
Mammograms are one of those uncomfortable, despicable procedures that women know we need to have after a certain age but prefer to postpone or turn a blind eye to. That is, until it hits home. I had left my prescription for the mammogram on the nightstand but picked it up again after receiving the sad news. Seven years after being diagnosed with breast cancer, one of my colleagues had passed away.
Coy, as Coynthia was referred to by her friends, hated to hear that anyone “lost” a battle against cancer. A warrior as a journalist and the pillar of her home, she was not about to be defeated by that wretched disease. She fought it long and hard, even after it metastasized in her spine, ovary, diaphragm, liver and finally her pelvis. She was indeed a warrior, and used all the weapons available to her in her battle.
In lieu of flowers for her funeral, her family asked that a donation be made to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, an organization that Coy worked closely with to raise awareness of the disease and educate women on the risks. Leave it to this great journalist to make sure that people were well-informed as one of her last wishes.
It turns out, as a Latina, Coy became another statistic. Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among Hispanic women. That is a fact. As to why, that is a little more complicated to determine. Researchers seem to think that it is a combination of socio-economic and cultural factors.
Being at a higher poverty level than non-Hispanic white women, more Latinas lack medical insurance, which puts them at a disadvantage in having adequate health care. Then, of course, there is the lack of awareness, due in part to the language barrier and conservative cultural stigma about how women should treat their bodies.
The bottom line is that Hispanic women are not getting screened, practicing self-examinations or having mammograms as often as they should, so when they do get diagnosed with cancer, it’s often at an advanced stage of the disease, which makes it harder to treat. As a matter of fact, uninsured Hispanics are two to three times more likely than non-Hispanic whites to have cancer diagnosed at a later stage, making it less treatable, according to the American Society of Internal Medicine.
There is one particular study suggesting that besides economic and social factors, it is possible that there is a biological/genetic basis for the different way cancer presents itself among Latinas. The study, conducted at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, compared Hispanic women and non-Hispanic white women with breast cancer who had the same access to health care. The results showed that Latinas were diagnosed at a younger age, at a later stage of the disease, with larger, higher-grade and less-treatable tumors.
There are volumes of research papers on cancer available in hundreds of publications and Web sites. Some of them might be contradictory or become outdated by new findings. But there are certain facts that are undisputed. Cancer is one of those diseases that does not discriminate. Perhaps one of the most eye-opening pieces of information that I have read about cancer is that even though there is a list of risk factors for breast cancer in women, you can have all the factors and not get the disease, or have none of them and be affected by it.
The projections are depressing. It is expected that 182,460 new cases of invasive breast cancer will occur in 2008, and 40,480 are expected to die from the disease this year. One of those optimistic new reports says that women whose breast cancers are detected early live as long as those who never develop the disease. I, for one, am going to schedule my mammogram as soon as possible. Thanks, Coy, for your smile, your guidance and your strength.

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(Maria Elena Salinas is the author of “I AM MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER: LIVING A LIFE WITHOUT SECRETS.” Reach her at www
.mariaesalinas.com)
© 2008 by Maria Elena Salinas
Distributed by King Features Syndicate