When reminding her daughter to be on her best behavior, that native Alabama woman always told her daughter to “be sweet.” Yet the mother’s own sweetness extended beyond mere inclusion of the word “sweet” in her everyday conversation. Her actions served as an excellent advertisement for her “sweet home, Alabama.”
For two years she served as the leader of a local Brownie troop, a troop in which her daughter was one of the young “Brownies.” She gave some of those young girls a life-long interest in Scouting. The girls in the troop that she helped to establish set a lofty goal, and they achieved that goal. They traveled to Bermuda during the summer before they began their senior year of high school.
One Girl Scout who went to Bermuda that summer later made a point of visiting the woman from Alabama during each Holiday Season. At one point, she traveled from a state not far from “sweet home, Alabama.” She flew up from Houston, Texas.
She did not make that trip in order to bring to a former southerner some news, news from another southern state. She made that trip, because she was in a graduate program at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Moreover, the woman from Alabama was dealing with breast cancer, and its unfortunate complications.
Those who have conducted any amount of cancer research have come to realize the no woman can consider herself free from the prospect that she could one day have breast cancer Researchers at M. D. Anderson once examined the chromosomes of hundreds of breast cancer patients. They did not find any gross chromosomal aberrations in those breast cancer patients.
Now, thanks to the field of molecular biology, doctors know that some women do inherit an increased chance for developing breast cancer Such women can be found in all four corners of the United States. Medical doctors do not need molecular biology or further research in order to appreciate the evidence that women in all areas of the U.S. stand some risk of developing breast cancer.
What society must now do is to find a way to educate each and every woman. Society must provide written material to those women who rely heavily on what they read. Society must look to the radio and TV to supplement the widely distributed written materials. Society must give every message the ability to impact those who will read it, watch it or hear it.
In the past, some women have been reluctant to discuss issues relating to breast cancer. Now many women have shed that reluctance. Yet women in some areas continue to shy away from mention of breast cancer Women who have reason to sing, “sweet home, Alabama” are often shy about entering into a discussion about breast cancer.
Society must give such women access to all of medicine’s life-saving information.