CRC Awareness versus Cancer awareness--and all those other ribbons!

I originally published this post on August 13, 2007, in The Semi-Colon Club yahoo! group.

--------------August 13, 2007--------------
Tony Snow.
Sharon Osbourne.
Barbara Barrie (from TV, movies and Broadway--who did a CRC awareness ad campaign that is up in our industrial health office to this day with the tagline "I almost died from embarrassment")
Tammy Faye Baker (deceased).
Leroy Sievers
Anne Rodgers Clark (dog show judge who frequently appeared in the panels judging dog shows on Animal Planet, deceased early 2007)
Farrah Fawcett (diagnosed last summer)
Darryl Strawberry.

There are lots of famous people who've had colon cancer...famous in their own right, not because they are someone's wife, husband, mother, father, sister or brother.

But that said, the face of colon cancer is staring back from the mirror everyday.
YOU are the one who can raise awareness, day by day, one person at a time.
It isn't about having a famous spokesperson; it's about BEING the spokesperson as only a survivor can be.

What Lance Armstrong did was raise cancer awareness. What he and LAF continue to do is challenge the people who decree what will and won't get funded, so that continuing research stays funded. THAT, we all need, regardless of diagnosis.

I wear a yellow wristband, not a blue one. I wear a blue ribbon on my ID lanyard at work. But most important, I speak up and out, where ever and when ever I can, where ever it's needed. I make guest appearances at support events.

I became a face of cancer for the people I come in contact with, I help make it real. I educate about the signs and symptoms in everything that I do. One person can touch hundreds of other people...or not. That part is the only choice we have in fighting this disease.