Dawn Colclasure's Blog

Author and poet Dawn Colclasure

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

My charity ebook, On the Wings of Pink Angels

As part of Read an E-Book Week, I’ll be featuring ebooks here on this blog. Three of them will be my own ebooks, but I’ll be sure to include a couple of others. The books featured here are only available as ebooks and not in print format as well. It’s my way of staying true to promoting actual ebooks during Read an E-Book Week!



The third ebook I’d like to promote for Read an E-Book Week is my charity ebook, On the Wings of Pink Angels. Royalties I receive from purchase of this ebook will be donated to charity.








On the Wings of Pink Angels: Triumph, Struggle and Courage Against Breast Cancer
Written and compiled by Dawn Colclasure
Gypsy Shadow Publishing, 2012
Ebook, 133 ppg.
Buy link



Synopsis:
"You have cancer." These are words people dread hearing. But when worse comes to worst, push comes to shove, something wonderful happens. More people come together for support and encouragement. More people participate in "Race for the Cure" events, and more people discover an inner strength within themselves that they never knew they had before. On the Wings of Pink Angels offers a gentle hand through this difficult time, sharing stories that inspire hope, strength, gratitude and courage during a time when someone must fight for his or her life against breast cancer.




Excerpt:

Breast Cancer: “It’s Not Just a Chick Thing”

A lot can be said about women and breast cancer. And, when you hear about someone being diagnosed with breast cancer, that someone is usually a woman.
 

Maine mother, writer and author Jenn Greenleaf knows a woman, her mother, who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. But she also happens to know a man who was diagnosed with breast cancer, as well. That man was her father.
 

During National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 2011, Jenn commented on her Facebook page that both of her parents are breast cancer survivors, adding, “It’s not just a chick thing.”
 

“I found out about my father’s diagnosis when I was nineteen or twenty, and I was devastated because he didn’t tell me the news until after he had gone through his mastectomy,” she said. “My father and I have a precarious relationship, at best, so it was difficult receiving this news. He and I had been trying to rebuild our relationship that year [which Jenn recalls as either 1994 or ‘95], so he came clean about what he went through because he knew it might have an affect on my future health.”
 

Up until then, Jenn knew very little about breast cancer. “To be honest, I didn’t know anything up close and personal about breast cancer. Sure, my primary care physicians taught me how to do self-examinations and I heard of celebrities who had either fought or lost their battle. I was impressed by how Montel Williams won his battle, particularly since he’s male and, back then, it seemed unheard of for a male to receive a breast cancer diagnosis.”
 

Indeed, it was so unheard of, that Jenn’s father expressed frustration over how very little men are considered when it comes to breast cancer.
 

“He felt strange about it, and blamed his lifestyle and life circumstances. He didn’t believe it had anything to do with genetics, but he couldn’t be sure because he and his five brothers grew up in the foster care system. He knew his family, but their personal and medical histories remain a mystery.”
 

As for Jenn’s mother, her diagnosis came later, in 2008.
 

“I was terrified when my mother told me she found a lump in 2008. I felt it, and asked her to get it checked out. She said, ‘I better, because everyone who’s felt it so far has said the same thing.’ She received her diagnosis, and began radiation. She was able to have a lumpectomy without having to lose too much. She’s still in recovery, and still has issues with pain and other lumps coming and going. So, the stress of her health still weighs heavily on my mind. She had ovarian cancer in 1986 and survived that with a hysterectomy, so when she received her second cancer diagnosis, I was certain we’d lose her.”
 

Thankfully, both of her parents are breast cancer survivors. What stands out about this experience is Jenn’s father being diagnosed with something that is majorly seen as a “woman’s disease.”
 

“I think it’s ridiculous, to be honest. I don’t like how everything is pink because it’s a breast issue—not a woman’s issue.”
 

She added, “I think the pink ribbons should be turned into a ribbon that blends blue into it somehow.”
(The rest of this interview appears in the ebook.)

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