Last week, while getting a free mammogram, a friend speculated, “What good is this free mammogram? What if they find something? It’s not like I have any resources.”

Then almost magically, that same day, I heard about Marisa Acocella, who must have heard my friend’s pleas.

Here’s her story found on the Home page of her most wonderful and creative site:

May 15, 2004, just three weeks before I was about to get marrried for the first time at 43 to the wonderful Silvano Marchetto, owner of Da Silvano restaurant, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

A bad situation was made even worse when I realized I had let my insurance lapse. As a freelance artist it is extremely difficult not only to get, but to keep your insurance. (FACT: 47 million people in this country don’t have health insurance. And that number keeps going up.)

Well, Silvano and I did get married. (I had bandages from the lumpectomy underneath my wedding dress.) Fortunately, before I started chemotherapy, my husband was able to put me on his insurance plan. Yes, I realize how lucky I am. But I’m even luckier than you think.

While writing my graphic memoir Cancer Vixen, I came up this fact: 49% of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer and don’t have insurance have a greater risk of dying from the disease. I also added up the cost of treatment I would have paid out of pocket. The total? $192,702.04. Who the heck has $192,702.04? I certainly don’t.

On National Mammography Day that October, I personally funded 38 mammograms at the Breast Center at St. Vincent’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, where I had my treatments. This was the beginning The Cancer Vixen Fund.