This weekend deviantART is focusing on breast cancer. And I highly respect that.

On June 30th, 2003, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was 10. I remember her going through chemotherapy, loosing her hair, becoming too weak to lift anything, having both of her breasts removed to prevent the cancer from spreading to her lungs, having lymph nodes removed from her arms. Miraculously she beat it, and has been in remission for 3 years. And I thank whoever who is up there for it every day, even though sometimes it doesn't seem like I do.

Breast cancer is one of the most widely known cancers, along with skin and lung cancer. But what about the male side of the spectrum? How often do you see prostrate and testicular cancer awareness ribbons on the sides of cars? Or see walks dedicated to helping the fight against those cancers? The answer may depend on where you live, but I'm guessing not as much as breast cancer.

Recently, a dear friend of mine told me that all the signs are saying that he has testicular cancer. If he does, he may never be able to have kids, or...You know what I mean.

How is this different than breast or ovarian cancer, you ask?

The answer is awareness.

I did a search on DA as an experiment before starting to write this journal.

'testicular cancer awareness' -There are no results matching your search
'testicular cancer' -52 results. And most of those have nothing to do with testicular cancer.

Then I searched two other things.

'breast cancer awareness' -485 results
'breast cancer' -1,796 results

...

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

Support lesser known cancer awareness. Just because they aren't more widely known doesn't mean that they don't kill, that they don't make families go through as much pain as those with widely known cancers.