Local group readies to commemorate National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

(First row, left to right): WCCOL volunteers Renee Olson, Elizabeth Lippert Kane, Danielle Bakewell and Julie Wurtzel. (Middle row, left to right) WCCOL volunteers Deb Tekippe, Donna Gilbert and Margaret Walter, County Board Chair John Logsdon and WCCOL volunteer Stephanie Cenek. (Back row, left to right): County supervisors Dean Thompson, Mark Kuhn and John Beard, County Auditor Ben Steines and County Supervisor Floyd Ashbacher.

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Winneshiek County Celebration of Life is a community effort started in 1998 to raise money for cancer awareness and prevention. In those 20 years, the organization has helped almost 1,800 Northeast Iowans with cancer.

Initially the group paid for free mammograms at Winneshiek Medical Center.  It still does that, but has expanded to offer gas cards and grocery cards to all kinds of cancer patients, not just breast cancer patients.  It also serves men as well as women.

In the 20 years since WCCOL formed, breast cancer deaths have fallen, although more than 40,000 Americans are expected to die from it in 2017.  2,500 of those will be men.  WCCOL officials say they have helped several men getting breast cancer in the last three years, when eligibility standards for assistance by WCCOL were broadened.

While there are plenty of success stories to celebrate now, still about one woman in eight in the United States will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime.