Awareness Months

Many of you, while driving down Bemidji Avenue, have probably noticed the banner on the railing near the waterfront advertising October as National Domestic Violence Awareness month. We are often overwhelmed by these awareness months’ advertisements. Regardless they are important to bring our attention to something that has affected many peoples’ lives dramatically. These people do not want others to be affected by them either especially when they are preventable or easier to overcome with early detection.

October was also National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (http://nbcam.org/) . We are all taught to detect breast cancer, by doing monthly self-breast exams. While looking for these lumps is helpful for detection of other types of breast cancer, there is another type of breast cancer for which lumps are not a symptom: Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC). It is a rare and not well-known form of breast cancer. Unfortunately, it can and has been mis-diagnosed as a breast infection, but it does not respond to antibiotics. For signs and symptoms see this May Clinic page: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/inflammatory-breast-cancer/DS00632/DSECTION=symptoms . For a video news article see: http://www.komonews.com/ibc/ .

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month. We all hear a lot about breast cancer, but lung cancer actually kills more people annually than breast, prostate, colon, live, kidney, and melanoma cancers combined - contributing to 1 in every 3 cancer deaths. For more information, go to: http://www.lungcanceralliance.org/ .

November is also National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month. No doubt many of have been touched by this disease. You may already know that it is the most common form of dementia, but did you know that it is a fatal brain disease that is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States? For more information regarding Alzheimer’s and related diseases, go to: www.alz.org .

Another November campaign is American Diabetes Month. With the increasing prevalence of diabetes in our societies, where better to focus awareness than in our schools! To coordinate a “Schoolwalk” fundraising event, go to: http://schoolwalk.diabetes.org/site/PageServer?pagename=SW_homepage . For more information on this disease, go to: www.diabetes.org/ .

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday season with all the festivities, I had better include one of December’s campaigns, National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month. In 2005, 16,885 people died in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes, accounting for 39% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States (NHTSA 2006). There are a lot of websites with a lot of good information. I did not find one definitive site that seemed to cover everything, but for a fact sheet see: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/alcohol/StopImpaired/HolidayPlanner/pages/FriendsFactSheet.htm or if you have teenagers see: http://www.alcoholalert.com/preventing-drunk-driving.html . Let’s keep our community safer by volunteering to be a designated driver or abstaining from drinking if you will be driving. Happy Holidays everyone!

While each month has numerous awareness campaigns associated with it, I have missed quite a few. However, in the interest of time and space, I picked only a few. I hope some of you found these to be helpful reminders of the things we need to continue to be aware of to increase or maintain the quality of each of our lives.