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Quotes About Breast Cancer

Melissa Bank: "During chemo, you're more tired than you've ever been. It's like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you're out. You don't know how you'll answer the door when your groceries are delivered. But you also find that you're stronger than you've ever been. You're clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now it's instantaneous."

Peggy Fleming: On facing breast cancer: "This is another kind of competition, but I'm being coached by an excellent team, and I've got a real strong competitive spirit."

Betty Ford: "When other women have this same operation, it doesn't make any headlines. But the fact that I was the wife of the President put it in headlines and brought before the public this particular experience I was going through. It made a lot of women realize that it could happen to them. I'm sure I've saved at least one person—maybe more."

Kate Jackson: "My breast cancer was caught very early thanks to my doctor a wonderful woman named Elsie Giogi, who just recently passed away after practicing medicine into her 80's. At the time, she had suggested I go for a baseline mammogram before age 40 because I had fibrocystic breasts. The mammogram discovered a tiny tumor, and it was so small that they were able to take it out very easily. I had a lumpectomy. Unfortunately, they did miss a little of the cancer, and two years later I had a mastectomy. But hey, I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm going to live to be 100!"

Olivia Newton-John: "Early detection is key," she said. "And if I hadn't found my lump early, I don't know what would have been. I am still here and I want to encourage women to do that on a regular basis."

Nancy Reagan: Upon hearing the results of her breast examination, the First Lady said: "I guess it's my turn."

Lynn Redgrave: "But when this happens to you - and I think other people would identify with this - suddenly, colors are brighter. You see everything."

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