Friday, March 2, 2012

Women with TNBC find they share more than disease

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a good piece about two women in Atlanta who leaned on one another as they both faced triple-negative breast cancer.  I would correct one line here, though.  The article says triple-negative is "one of the deadliest breast cancers there is."  I would say the women face a form of breast cancer that can be aggressive but is highly survivable.  Ugh.  I do get tired of tired journalism that uses thoughtless language that can terrify women unnecessarily. (As though it is ever necessary to terrify women.)  Especially in a positive piece such as this.

1 comment:

Sue in Italia/In the Land Of Cancer said...

I agree with you about the language. Coming across phrases as 'one of the deadliest forms' scared me unnecessarily when I first was diagnosed with TNBC. Journalism seems all about grabbing attention and 'deadly' is a useful device. At the very least, they should define deadly. A tornado is considered deadly if it kills one person out of a possible million. Your blog and eventual book will be a good antidote to this scare tactic.