CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: TAKE THE TIME TO LEARN HOW YOU CAN SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985; she had her mastectomy just after Thanksgiving of that year. She died of cancer in May 1992 when she was 59.

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. My point isn't to remind you that breast cancer kills, but that breast cancer can be survived, if it's detected and treated early enough.

If my mother had had annual mammograms, her tumor might have been caught earlier. If she had known about breast self-exams, the tumor might have been caught earlier.

But that information wasn't available then; it is now.

My mother lived seven years after her initial diagnosis, which was about average at the time.

But in the five years since her death, mammograms have become much more sensitive and able to spot smaller growths, and new drugs like tamoxifen, as well as more refined radiation and chemotherapy treatments, can kill malignancies much more quickly.

I watched my mother fight the disease; she lost. Her struggles with the disease, and with radiation and chemotherapy, define pain for me.

My sister and I know we're at greater risk for breast cancer because my mother had it. That's something we have to live with, and something we have to learn from.

This is what we can all learn from every woman who has died of breast cancer: We each have the power, and the responsibility, to prevent another breast cancer death, whether it's our own, our sisters', our mothers' or our daughters'.

No one else can do it for us. We owe it to ourselves and to the people we love to take the initiative.

If you're 40 or older, or have a high risk of breast cancer, see your doctor about getting a baseline mammogram. If you're over 50, you should have a mammogram every year.

Yes, the procedure can be painful.

Breast cancer hurts worse. So does radiation, and so does chemotherapy. And mammograms can keep cancer and cancer treatments from becoming a reality.

Learn to do a self-exam. Your doctor can show you how. And ask your doctor to do a breast exam every year when you get your checkup.

I watched my mother die of breast cancer, and I pray for the day that no one else will have to watch someone they love die of it.

Here's the other side of the coin. Thousands of women survive breast cancer every year; every woman who defeats breast cancer scores a victory for those of us who risk developing it ourselves.

You don't have to wear a pink ribbon in honor of breast cancer awareness; learning to save your own life is recognition enough.

My mother, and hundreds of thousands of other women -- mothers, wives, daughters, sisters -- have died of breast cancer.

You don't have to.

Peggy O'Farrell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian