I always get sad when I read/am told/overhear/become aware of someone suffering from breast cancer.  When I heard the news about Ms. Mickelson being diagnosed, at age 37, with this killer of a disease I had to sit down for a minute and remember.  I hate this illness.  It killed my sister seven years ago, depriving me of my sibling, my mother of her daughter, and my neice and nephews of their mother.  This is an equal opportunity disease, caring not about race, religion, ethnicity, socio-economic level, character, age, whether you watch what you eat and make your bed every morning, have a to do list, hate ironing, avoid excess, or are a practicing hedonist.  Doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t play well with others, the intention being to kill it victims. 

I, like most people I know, get solicitations for donations to noble causes every day.  Most are for good causes made by people wanting to help those suffering from some misfortune or another.  I wish I had the funds to give to all of them, unfortunately I am neither clever enough to invent something which I can convince large quantities of people they absolutely need to make their lives better, nor lucky enough to have exited the birth canal with a silver spoon tucked between my lips.  This however became personal seven years ago.  I do what I can to support research into beating this cancer every chance I get; I even have pink checks with the pink ribbon all over them because the profits all went to breast cancer research.  Nobody has made fun of my checks, ever. 

This is really hard to write, I keep having to wipe my eyes.  I want to let the Mickelson family, and every family, dealing with this disease that I am finacially and spiritually supporting them in their very personal, very difficult and frightening war with this disease.  The more we all do, the faster someone much smarter than I discovers the way to knock this killer out of the present day and into the history books.