Ellen Wants To Raise Awareness on Breast Cancer

Ellen Degeneres has a personal interest in breast cancer: her mother. Now she wants to raise awareness about the illness and the importance of regular mammograms. I read this story on the USA Today website:

There are only a few places Ellen DeGeneres doesn’t like to dance, and the doctor’s office during her mammogram visits is one of them. Though she has been asked.

“It’s not usually a place I dance, but it is a place I go all the time, and people know me there,” says DeGeneres, who is recognizing October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month on her afternoon talk show, including a special broadcast on Wednesday.

Her mother, Betty, originally got DeGeneres involved with the cause. The funny lady, 49, remembers all too well watching her have breast cancer treatment when Ellen was 16 and Betty was in her mid-40s.

“Everything was a dirty little secret back then,” says Ellen, who was raised in what she describes as the sheltering Christian Science religion in the small town of Atlanta, Texas. “The fact that she had a mastectomy was not spoken of. She tried to shield me from it a little bit, but she needed my help with recovery and physical rehabilitation. It bonded us even more.”

Echoes Betty DeGeneres: “It’s a very special relationship that I do not take for granted. We’ve been there for each other.”

She says her diagnosis played a part in the collapse of her second marriage. In the decades since, her daughter has played matchmaker. “I’ve had a couple of boyfriends, and they were very nice,” Betty says. “Ellen had Peter O’Toole on the show and asked him what he was looking for in a woman ‘because my mama’s single.’ Ellen also had a couple on her show who just got married — she’s 90 and he’s 89, so I guess never say never. But (currently) no takers.”

Ellen, who is coupled with Nip/Tuck actress Portia de Rossi, discovered a growth in her own breast several years ago, and some non-cancerous tissue was removed.

The American Cancer Society recommends annual mammograms for women 40 and older, and Ellen hopes for a day when there’s a more pleasant alternative to the machines that flatten the breast for low-dose X-rays. “There’s got to be a better way,” she says. “I swear, if men had to have their penises squeezed between something like that, somebody would be working really hard on it.”

Tags: ellen degeneres, breast cancer, mammograms, mother

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