The Today Show  had an E! entertainment reporter and reality TV show star on early this morning- Giuliana Rancic.  And as I write this all the celebrity news  and other news sites are rushing to share the news she shared this morning on national television – as she was getting ready for IVF to try to conceive they had her get a mammogram, and she popped positive for a breast cancer diagnosis.

I am not a big   reality TV show watcher (and there seem to be reality TV shows for reality TV shows), so I don’t know much about this Giuliana’s show, but I have seen her on E! News and fashion police with Joan Rivers.  It takes guts for women to go public on breast cancer and I felt sorry for her this morning.  You could see the woman was vibrating.

But I have to ask as an everyday woman who has already gone through the diagnosis, the surgery, the radiation treatments….will Ann Curry be interviewing me too?

I am not knocking this Giuliana’s decision to be public, but I do have to ask if she wasn’t a celebrity figure, would the Today Show have been interested in her story?  

Here I am one of the millions of every day women who have gone through this.  And trust me, the majority of us are doing it on a heck of bit more of a budget then a celebrity.  Some of the women going through it are probably doing it without health insurance or are self-pay on their health insurance like me. 

In other news, I got a form from my health insurance company which annoyed the crap out of me – basically asking if I have other health insurance, or am getting disability or social security…and am I still working.   I mean seriously? What do they think? That I am off decorating the country estate and eating bon-bons?   No health insurance company, you are it.

Additionally, I still feel like I am a revolving door of co-payments and doctor appointments and am waiting to hear from my oncologist on my actual start date of Tamoxifen.

This weekend I had the late at night thought of “what if it comes back?”  Fortunately for me, when I had that thought, my sweet man was right there.  “If that happens, we will deal with it then” he replied. 

(I don’t think realistically once breast cancer has touched you that you can escape those occasional thoughts rattling through your brain.)

I was assailed with boobs this weekend, though.  We went to the PA Renaissance Faire.  I am having a hard enough time getting back into a normal bra, and these women were doing the full corset.  I wondered how many had gotten recent Ye Olde Mammograms….

One other breast cancer thing – check out writer Diane Mapes – she is a successful freelance writer who is writing about her breast cancer among other things on her blog Single Shot Seattle.  Her post from October 15 resonated with me – it’s titled  Writing about breast cancer is scary, too – I think everyone should read it.  Here’s a peek at the post:

So it’s been an interesting couple of days. My essay, Mastectomy and the Single Girl, went live yesterday on Today/MSNBC.com, garnering a lot of online comments. I’m happy to say most of them were supportive, although there were a few people who thought I was “crude and vulgar” or being too flip with regard to a horrible, devastating disease (uh duh — I have it) or that I was suffering not only from ILC (invasive lobular carcinoma) but a really bad case of TMI.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Quite frankly, I still haven’t decided if I’m insane or stupid or brave or full of myself or what when it comes to sharing my story.