October has come and gone, and in the past 31 days, I have managed to cover various topics concerning breast cancer on my personal blog — a deadly BUT preventable disease. Did you manage to follow the series of awareness posts on breast cancer? Did you learn a thing or two from those awareness posts?

What you need to know about breast cancer

• In Breast cancer? What?! I talked about what breast cancer is, what normal cells are and how they differ from cancer cells, and how the disease spreads.
• I shared with you some of the facts and figures related to breast cancer in Breast cancer-related statistics.
• Next, I did some online research and shared with you a quick and easy way to save your live — by performing Breast Self Exams (BSE) every month — in Breast cancer: Examine yourself.
• Are you at risk of breast cancer? What causes breast cancer? Find out about these, and other risk factors in Risk factors for breast cancer.
• Then we discussed some Breast cancer symptoms — do you see any swelling or thickness of your breast? Do you notice any changes in the appearance of the nipple? Is there any discharge from your breast/nipple?
• So if you (or somebody you know) have been diagnosed with breast cancer, what are the treatments available? In Breast cancer treatments, I talked about some of the more common approaches in treating breast cancer.
• And finally, in Breast cancer news, I have compiled some of the very interesting findings in the field of breast cancer and its treatments that could potentially save your life. Or that of someone you know/love.

Apart from those drop-dead-serious posts that were written to spread awareness on the disease, I have also written a couple of other lighter posts, but they were also related to breast cancer:

• I blogged about Lin @ Queen of the froggers who pledged to donate 5 pence for each comment left on her blog throughout the month of October to Cancer Research UK. She received a total of 435 comments throughout October, which means that she will be donating £21.75 to Cancer Research UK! :)
• I also blogged about some Pink Ribbon Cards made by breast cancer survivor, Lorelle.

Blogging for Boobs

And, I participated in an online campaign called Blogging for Boobs. A lot of other bloggers participated in the campaign as well, and their entries can be found at the official Blogging for Boobs site. Some of those that brought tears to my eyes were as follow (WARNING: Get some Kleenex!):

• Jennifer, who has a family history of brain, cervical, ovarian, lung, and breast cancers; diabetes; COPD and emphysema; Alzheimer’s; arterial blockages and blowouts; heart attacks; and strokes, wrote about how her mother fought breast cancer ever so fiercely.
• Michelle has breast cancer running through her veins and she knows that her risks of getting breast cancer are 75%. Hence she has made the decision to have a double mastectomy and radiotherapy to kill the rest of the breast tissue off when she reaches the age of 35.
• Someone Amanda loves dearly is dying of cancer, and she is currently looking after her “tiny children”, supporting her husband and keeping an agreement to make her laugh as much as I can and transcribing her journals into a book for her children to know her life as it has been until now.
• 70s flowerchild shared the story of how breast cancer just snuck up and stole her sister-in-law away.
• Dear Prudence recalled how she gambled with her life to carry her then unborn child to term, at the same time worrying about breast cancer.
• silly little imperfection wrote her sister, Steph, a poem. Steph was diagnosed in 1990, at 23, and spent the next nine years fighting for her life. She passed on in June of 1999, a week before silly little imperfection’s high school graduation.

How did your blog-hopping experience go? What did you find?