12/02/2025
In October we all wore pink. Now it’s time to schedule your breast health screening for the new year. Though October is Breast Health Screening and Awareness Month, Deb’s story, the Pink Mile, reminds us that it is always time to do a self-check and to make sure we have our screenings.
The Pink Mile - Deb Carpenter-Nolting of Bushnell
“My daughters planned to spend the summer of 2006 in a sublet on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, so I packed my car with overflow items and followed their Jeep across Iowa and into Illinois. The only open parking near their apartment was several blocks away, and it took many long trips to unpack both cars. The second day, we walked to where we had parked and became salmon swimming through a river of pink. Thousands of women participating in The Avon Breast Cancer Awareness Walk streamed past us. We sat on a bench across from Lake Michigan, an expansive prairie of water, and discussed the Walk. I was impressed by the sheer number of women involved in this cause. I did not yet know that they were walking for me.
A month later, I found the lump. The next morning, I called my doctor, who fit me into his schedule that day. After he examined me, he ordered a mammogram. My friend and I had a two-week-long tour giving programs about western women’s journeys, so the mammogram would have to wait until we got back. During those two weeks, I thought of the pioneer women who put one foot in front of the other along the Oregon Trail. I also thought of my grandmother persevering through her breast cancer trek. Then I thought of the women in Chicago walking for awareness, walking for us, walking for me.
I did not yet know that my oldest daughter would walk for me a year from then, in Chicago, with a cast on her foot, for seven miles, or that my youngest daughter would accompany me on my journey by sleeping on the hospital floor, next to my bed, after my mastectomy. But I did feel it at the time, and I can affirm it now, that support from loved ones makes all the difference in the world on this breast cancer journey—the pink mile.”
Panhandle Public Health District encourages every woman to do monthly self-breast exams and urges all adults to prioritize breast health today. Schedule your next mammogram, discuss your risk factors with a doctor, and commit to monthly self-checks. Together, we can turn awareness into action and save lives.
Substantial support for breast cancer awareness and research funding has helped create advances in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Breast cancer survival rates have increased, and the number of deaths associated with this disease is steadily declining, largely due to factors such as earlier detection, a new personalized approach to treatment and a better understanding of the disease.
