I ran into a neighbor the other day at the grocery store. She has breast cancer, has just finished her final chemotherapy treatment, and proudly displays her bald head as she enthusiastically takes on life. I introduced her to my husband, we all chatted, and then we parted ways. And soon after, my husband asked me if she is the neighbor whose husband we spoke with just recently about his wife's breast cancer journey. I told him this was a different woman -- another neighbor with breast cancer. Including me, that makes three of us with breast cancer in the same community of just 200 houses. And this shocked my husband -- that there are three of us in the same neighborhood with breast cancer. But I told him this really is not surprising, that it's probably not all that uncommon. And I told him there are probably more women with breast cancer residing in the houses on the streets that surround us. We just don't know them all.

I've heard many times that most people are personally touched by breast cancer in some way. It might be each of us with the diagnosis. Or it may be a family member. Or a friend. Or a co-worker. Or a neighbor. Because incidences of breast cancer have increased over the years, and in the United States, the rate of new cases has been increasing more than one percent per year since the 1940s. In the 1980s, the rate of new cases rose markedly -- perhaps due to increased and better screening -- and only recently have cases been leveling off. It is estimated that just over 200,000 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in American women in 2006.

One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in her life. And that is startling. Which is why it is not so startling to me that there are three of us in my neighborhood with this common disease -- the second-leading cause of cancer death for women, after lung cancer.