One Simple Way to Really Be There For Your Kids

This post is not about crafts or activities or even about how to really talk to your kids. Those are all important, but what I am going to share today is even more simple, straightforward, basic, and necessary.

If you want to really be there for your kids, make sure you will be there by doing early detection screening for breast cancer.

Simple. Easy. Necessary.

Yet so many women don’t do it. We all get caught up in our busy lives, and doing a breast exam or getting a mammogram becomes just one more item in a never ending to-do list that we never quite seem to complete.

Like so many people these days, my life has been touched by cancer. We nearly lost my sister-in-law to cancer just weeks after she and my brother married. More recently, a dear friend has struggled with breast cancer, now thankfully in remission. But I have lost two people close to me to cancer, one of them to breast cancer.

One left behind a daughter, who just celebrated her third birthday. One has grandchildren that she never met, and a daughter who has to raise her children without her own mother to call on for advice.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so it’s a good time to raise your own awareness about the disease and what you can do about it.

Here are the facts:

Breast cancer is the second most common kind of cancer in women. (Skin cancer is the first).
About 1 in 8 women born today in the U.S. will get breast cancer at some point in their lives.
Approximately 231,340 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in the U.S. each year.

Early detection is key

The American Cancer Society recommends the following for early breast cancer detection in women without breast symptoms:

Women age 40 and older should have a mammogram every year and should continue to do so for as long as they are in good health.
Women in their 20s and 30s should have a clinical breast exam (CBE) as part of a periodic (regular) health exam by a health professional preferably every 3 years.
Breast self-exam (BSE) is also an option for women starting in their 20s.

What happens if I find something?

When detected early, the breast cancer survival rate is as high as 99 percent (!), but treatment can be expensive, so consider insurance policies to ease the financial burden and the worry. Aflac’s cash benefits can help policyholders pay the out-of-pocket costs associated with costly cancer treatments. A cancer insurance policy can be used not only for treatment expenses not covered by major medical insurance, but for all those other expenses that can crop up: extra child care, transportation to and from the doctor or treatments, and even everyday living expenses, such as mortgage payments or groceries.

Because when you or a family member is diagnosed with cancer, you should be able to focus on recovery not finances. A cancer insurance policy can help you do just that.

Plus, with Aflac’s recently introduced One Day Pay(SM) initiative, which allows Aflac to process, approve and pay eligible claims in just a day, you can have the cash you need in hand faster than ever before.

Watch this video to see how Aflac’s cancer insurance policy helped one policyholder through her breast cancer journey.

How Aflac is supporting Breast Cancer Awareness Month

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Aflac will be partnering with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) again for its second annual “This Duck Wears Pink” campaign. AACR is the first and largest cancer research organization in the world, with a membership of more than 35,000 professionals residing in 101 countries working on the front lines of the effort to eradicate cancer.

You can buy make a donation or buy campaign-related merchandise including the plush duck, hats and a breast cancer ribbon pin, with all the net proceeds going to the AACR for the specific purpose of funding research aimed at finding a cure for breast cancer.