World Breast Cancer Day

For women with breast cancer, mastectomies – removal of one or both breasts – They don’t mutilate us, they save our livesexpressed oncology patients, who demanded an end to the stigma towards them. We are still women, we are beautiful and we lack nothingthey emphasized on the world day of this disease, which was commemorated yesterday.

Gathered in the so-called roundabout of the women who fight, on Paseo de la Reforma avenue, where they shared their testimonies, they also demanded that the authorities invest in early detection and treatments. We do not want monuments painted pink, but diagnosesthey cried.

As part of their demonstration to make visible and raise awareness about this disease and its repercussions, the Tetas y Rayas collective placed nearly 3,000 bras, donated by women with breast cancer, around the gazebo and on the planters. Some of the clothes had flowers and messages like I’m alive.

A special section was dedicated to women who have died from this condition, which was represented by black bras and photographs of the patients.

We want you to see us! We are tired of being looked at like a piece of sick meatKarina da Silva reproached.

In an interview, she emphasized that women with this disease are more than cancer and more than their breasts. Having your breasts removed is an act of life, of wanting to survive. There are those who think that we are nothing more than a couple of chichis, but we are women, oncological women, who do not depend on that.

He indicated that these stigmas are among the doctors themselves. In her case, she shared that the doctor who treated her the first thing he told her was that she could rebuild herself. “I asked her: ‘What if I don’t want to?’ She told me that it was not normal, that 99 percent of women reconstruct themselves. I told him that I want to be one of the 1 percent that doesn’t, because what matters to me is being alive, being able to celebrate with my son, with my family and live many more years.”

The Tetas y Rayas collective invited yesterday to commemorate the fight and awareness against breast cancer. Photo Yazmín Ortega Cortés

Lorena Estrada, 29, warned about the fact that young women can also suffer from this disease, as in her case, who was diagnosed at age 23, after stopping breastfeeding her daughter.

He explained that it took 18 months to receive the diagnosis because of the stigma that breast cancer does not affect young people. After five years I have metastases, surviving day by day the stigma of being a sick patient.

Given these erroneous ideas, she stressed that women with oncology We are also useful and want to continue with our lives. We are not going to continue as the women we were before, but we want to have a space where we can be hired and continue being productive.

He said that according to official figures for 2023, in that year 25,190 cases of breast cancer were detected, of which 24,609 were women and 581 men. In that time, he said, 547 women between 15 and 39 years old died.

As of September 28, 2024, 21,330 new cases have been diagnosedthe majority of women, he added.

María de los Ángeles Arriola asked to stop aesthetic violence and for federal authorities to provide greater resources for timely diagnoses and treatments.

In her case, she mentioned that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, between 2019 and 2020, she stopped periodically having mammograms, so it was in 2021 when she was diagnosed. “The doctor suggested that I remove the breast on the left side, and I said: ‘that’s fine’, because with this I have more than 80 percent chance that the cancer will not return.”