Heidi Kyser

When I saw the paper deliveryman making a tardy 7:30 a.m. round on my street last Friday, Sept. 30, I wondered if it had anything to do with that day’s issue of the Las Vegas Review Journal being pink. I imagined the scene in the printing department – someone in pre-press gritting his teeth and cursing management for their bright ideas.

Real or imagined printing drama aside, it was a worthy endeavor. The black-ink-on-pink-paper edition was designed to call attention to National Breast Cancer Awareness month, which started the following day, Oct. 1. RJ owner Stephens Media donated proceeds from street sales of the paper to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Although well-known, the pervasiveness of breast cancer still surprises me. Two of my aunts have had it, and yet the steady stream of e-mails I got over the weekend thanking me for my story in the special pink RJ took me by surprise. I was reminded that this disease’s power to ravage bodies and lives is such that it has left little of our society untouched.

This month invites everyone to do something, no matter how small. Women can learn to check their own bodies or make appointments for mammograms. Men can make donations to research organization or sign up to run in next spring’s Race for the Cure. Kids can get community service points for school by volunteering with local organizations like the Janet Sue Mason Foundation.

If everyone whose life has been touched by breast cancer does a little, it gets us all closer to the day when we won’t need a month, or a pink paper, as a reminder anymore.