Yesterday was - how do I say this without risking profound understatement?

We are nearing the end of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Here is a quick roundup of some breast cancer news, facts, and posts. Did you do a post on breast cancer awareness? Do you understand the risk factors for breast cancer? Are you at a high risk? Do you worry about breast cancer? Have you been keeping up with your mammograms and self exams? From Team Tracy... The Facts:

A midlife blogger shares the story of her first day back to work, after breast cancer.

It was a couple of years ago when I noticed something odd about one of my breasts and went to my doctor to get it checked out. I was nervous, and cracked joke after joke as I was poked and prodded. To my great relief, the slight discharge I was experiencing was pronounced completely normal. Unfortunately, while all of that was being investigated, my doctor found a lump.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month; you can work to reduce your risk by eating right, exercising regularly, and having a mammogram.  You can also help fund a cure by shopping for products that support breast cancer research.  Here are five picks; some portion of the sale price of each goes to the Susan G. Komen foundation and other parner organizations working to end breast cancer.

BeTwinned found a breast cancer support group that was worth going to on a Saturday morning. The speaker got me thinking about so many things … where am I going? What am I leaving behind? Is it peaceful at the center of my own labyrinth? Shedding, doing some things differently like I’ve been trying to do — is that a part of the journey to the center of the labyrinth, or is it a part of the coming out, since one goes out of the labyrinth the same way one goes in? Just thinking about it is labyrinthine!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I wanted to do a little more than the average breast cancer awareness post. Here is my humble attempt. I've put this post together with; videos of survivors, an interview with Christina Applegate, early signs & symptoms, blogs of note, news, and links to informative support sites. If I've missed something (and I'm sure I have), please share the information with our readers in comments. If you take nothing else away from this post, please take this...

Last week I posted about Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, and this past Wednesday, I participated in a very informative phone conference on bio-technology, cancer research, and cancer prevention. The conference focused on breast and ovarian cancer.

Are you interested in lowering your blood pressure? Reducing your risk of heart disease? If so, you may want to consider the DASH Diet.

Last week the Breast Cancer Fund released its State of the Evidence Report for 2008. The 2008 report, provides the most comprehensive listing to-date of chemicals linked to breast cancer. It also provides a much more complex picture of breast cancer causation than traditionally accepted, one in which timing, mixtures and dose of environmental exposures interact with genes and lifestyle factors.

There was a lot of news coverage this week, about a court case of a family with a child who appeared to developed Autism after her childhood immunizations...I wondered how this might affect other families dealing with this devastating disease? Also in the blogs, is a petition that women can sign, supporting an end to drive-thru mastectomies. And end they should, this practice is a disgrace, as well as a travesty against women. And, my pet-peeve issue (Gardasil), is also in the news. Autism...

I got to see what that looks like today, after my second follow-up MRI - the first follow-up having been after my first-ever MRI.