Purple

Every cancer has its color.  When Ken had colon cancer we joked that the color probably wasn't so pretty as pink.  I've seen it listed as blue and brown.  Almost as soon as my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, purple ribbons showed up at our home to put on our mail boxes. Here's a link telling all the colors and which awareness they go with.

I never really thought much about the colors.... possibly not even bringing awareness to anyone's attention.  However, my husband was diagnosed early for colon cancer because a friend encouraged him to get checked.  Pancreatic cancer has no real early detection signs.  By the time that it is diagnosed, it's too late.  My mother was going to the doctor because she had started having some stomach pains and general sick feeling that lingered.  They did many tests until finally she received a diagnose.  Two months before she was generally healthy, exercising, eating healthy, with no idea that would soon change.

So now, after my husband is cancer free for 5 years and my mother died of cancer, what can I do to bring awareness?  Money is always the greatest need in any research of cancer.  Advances are always being made and new medicines and techniques are always being found to help patients.

I don't have extra money laying around that I can donate.  However I do have material...purple and brown material.  I'm going to start a sampler quilt to be donated or auctioned off (not sure yet how that will be done) with the proceeds going to the American Cancer Society in honor of my mother, my husband, my father-in-law (died of lung cancer), my grandfather (died with prostrate cancer), my aunt (died of colon cancer), and my son's best friend, Patrick (died at 11 from bone cancer).

Here's my first block, still under construction, The Nine Patch Tulip in purples: