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MRI results are in and the suspicious area on the bone scan is not cancer or metastatic. Still NED!
Going to a neurologist to see what’s causing pain after I return from a trip away!
Thank you for all the love, support and prayers! 💖🙏🏼
Anyone touched by cancer knows about testing Scanxiety. You don’t want catastrophic thoughts running through your mind.
It’s been a slow process of testing, fuzzy thinking, difficult concentration, pain, and symptoms piling on over the past few months. I’m mostly disappointed that I’m less productive.
It started with pain in my right ribs. Then there was more pain on my right breast that recently extended to my back ribs too. I’ve had X-rays, MRI without contrast, and most recently a bone scan. Each time I hear results of no mets I’m extremely grateful.
I’ve had early stage breast cancer twice, chemotherapy, radiation, lots of breast surgeries including a mastectomy with reconstruction. Everyone knows how passionate I am to see that we do everything to extend lives with quality of life and find a cure for Stage IV.
Just when I thought all was clear I got a call from my oncologist that after further inspection there is a suspicious spot on my spine at T8. Tomorrow they do an MRI with contrast on my spine and see if a biopsy is warranted.
I could use good thoughts and prayers.
While I feel fear, I refuse to let it run my life, (easier said than done) especially when there’s so much I am grateful for including all the incredible support around me.
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We are pleased to announce the success of our newly implemented scholarship program. We awarded two amazing women, Jennie Grimes and Grazia De Michele paid scholarships thanks to our generous donors at Advocates for Breast Cancer (A4BC).
Grazia De Michelle – an Italian born woman currently living in the UK.was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, at the age of 30, and has been a patient advocate ever since. She was treated in Italy where, unlike the United States, breast cancer advocacy is still in its infancy and the level of patients’ engagement with researchers and healthcare providers is low. As a result, at the end of active treatment, in 2012, Grazia started her blog, Le Amazzoni Furiose (The Furious Amazons), to promote Italian women’s involvement in the international debate on breast cancer. A year later, she joined the Breast Cancer Consortium, a network of scholars and advocates interested in breast cancer, critical health-literacy and evidence-base medicine founded by medical sociologist Gayle Sulik.
Jennie Grimes – a metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patient is literally dying for a cure. She is 35 years old, going through a rough time because there are limited choices of drugs to keep her alive. She asked the professionals at #SABCS15, “please keep me alive.” My heart is breaking because I wish there was more available for her and so many others dying of stage IV breast cancer.
The most exciting part of the symposium was (A4BC) joining with other organizations that are working toward the same mission. We met with Beth Caldwell, mother, wife, cancer patient, METUP co-founder, and blogger. Meeting people that we know through social media and being able to interact with them is so meaningful because we are able to join forces to save lives. We also met Corrie Painter PHD who along with NiKhil Wagle, MD is working on the MBCProject.org. They believe in sharing the data. This is a whole new way of approaching research.
The truth is that when it comes to breast cancer, we are in an epidemic. Over 40,000 women and 400 men die each year in the U.S. alone from Metastatic Breast Cancer. This is the same number of deaths in the U.S. that occurred during the height of the AIDS epidemic. So while many breast cancer organizations use pink marketing to raise money for a cure, the reality is they just keep saturating the public with the idea that breast cancer is a pretty pink disease with survivors.
People mean well. But they don’t understand that living with MBC has nothing to do with whether the person “fights hard enough.”
Many people did not understand why we are demanding that Stage IV needs more focus; too many women (and some men) are dying. What we’ve done in 25 years has not had much impact on the death rates. We must prioritize our efforts to save lives.
If we could finally understand why someone gets breast cancer, like we understand how AIDS is spread, it would be a huge help towards finding life saving treatments and prevention.
If you want to be part of the work we are doing at Advocates for Breast Cancer, please consider giving a tax free donation. We have a new donation page on our site. We are so grateful to our donors and supporters. Wishing you peace, health, love and happy holidays! 💝💖💝💖
A Seattle mother and her daughter both have breast cancer. They support each other through arduous treatments and the pain of watching a loved one suffer.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.wsj.com
Great Article by Sumathi Reddy about Beth Caldwell and her mom Colleen ‘Susi’ Stevens supporting each other while both are going through breast cancer treatment. I am so lucky that I am with Beth at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and I can’t wait to blog more about this incredible experience.
To learn more about the great work Beth is doing for Metastatic Breast Cancer please go to http://www.metup.org. To see her blog go to: http://cultofperfectmotherhood.com/
————————————————————–Sourced Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.wsj.com
Suffer
By Sumathi Reddy
Seattle
Colleen ‘Susi’ Stevens, left, and her daughter Beth Caldwell together at Ms. Stevens’ final chemotherapy session in November at a Seattle hospital. ENLARGE
Colleen ‘Susi’ Stevens, left, and her daughter Beth Caldwell together at Ms. Stevens’ final chemotherapy session in November at a Seattle hospital. Photo: Ian C. Bates for The Wall Street Journal
In between the seamless stream of conversation between mother and daughter—jumping from holiday gifts for the children to the adults’ lifetime Girl Scouts membership—they chat about their breast cancers.
Sitting together at a Seattle restaurant, Colleen Stevens recalls the time the two went wig shopping. Her daughter, Beth Caldwell, eventually decided to go bareheaded. They talk about their shared oncologist, Eddie, as if he’s a relative. (Ms. Caldwell exchanges texts with him and they are working on a book together.)
The mother and daughter barely eat the Gorgonzola and wild mushroom pizzas sitting in front of them. “The chemo,” says the 67-year-old Ms. Stevens, who goes by the nickname Susi. “It kills your appetite.”
Ms. Caldwell, who is 39, was diagnosed in March 2014 with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer that has spread to her brain, liver and bones. She is continuing treatments but knows her reality: The cancer isn’t going away; it will eventually take her life. Metastatic breast cancer patients live an average of three years after diagnosis.
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Just over a year after her diagnosis, Ms. Caldwell’s mother was diagnosed with Stage 2a triple negative breast cancer, a particularly aggressive type.
Their cancers aren’t related, nor are they linked by known genetic mutations.
“You have to live fearing that the cancer is going to come back,” Ms. Caldwell tells her mother. “And I have to live knowing it’s going to kill me.”
Beth Caldwell, who has become an advocate for cancer-research funding, wrote in a blog post: ‘People ask me why I’m so committed to getting more research done on metastatic breast cancer, knowing that I’m not likely to live long enough to benefit from it. I don’t want my mom to die of breast cancer. It’s always been personal for me, but it’s even more personal now.’ ENLARGE
Beth Caldwell, who has become an advocate for cancer-research funding, wrote in a blog post: ‘People ask me why I’m so committed to getting more research done on metastatic breast cancer, knowing that I’m not likely to live long enough to benefit from it. I don’t want my mom to die of breast cancer. It’s always been personal for me, but it’s even more personal now.’ Photo: Ian C. Bates for The Wall Street Journal
One in eight women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her life. Experts say it isn’t rare for mothers and daughters to both have the disease. About 7% of breast cancers are in women under the age of 40, who tend to have more aggressive cases.
The risk of breast cancer doubles if one has a first-degree relative—such as a mother or daughter—who has also been diagnosed. Oncologists say only a small portion of these cases are linked to inherited mutations of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.
“We definitely see family clusters and even when we look at 17 or 23 genes we’re still not seeing an underlying gene mutation,” says Jennifer Litton, an associate professor in breast medical oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “So it’s probably more than just one gene or a perfect storm of genes and other factors in the environment.”
“I think the moms who have gone through chemo, they’re scared for their daughter. They know what she’s facing,” Dr. Litton says.
Edmond Marzbani, a 35-year-old, soft-spoken doctor who is medical director of oncology at Northwest Hospital & Medical Center, part of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, is Ms. Caldwell and Ms. Stevens’ oncologist. “They look out for each other. They’re fairly well versed in each other’s medical care,” says Dr. Marzbani, who said the two patients have given him permission to discuss any details of their cases with each other.
Dr. Marzbani says he sometimes worries bad news from one patient will affect the other emotionally. But he knows that ultimately both of them would be upset if he wasn’t honest. “They are so close in this particular situation that it would be pointless,” he says.
Colleen Stevens, left, and daughter Beth Caldwell on an earlier trip together to London. ENLARGE
Colleen Stevens, left, and daughter Beth Caldwell on an earlier trip together to London. Photo: Beth Caldwell
Ms. Caldwell, a former civil rights education attorney, over the past year has helped found MET UP, a nonprofit that lobbies for more funding for metastatic breast cancer research. She and her mother live 20 minutes apart in the north end of Seattle. Her parents live in the same green ranch-style house in the quiet middle-class neighborhood she and her older sister grew up in.
Ms. Caldwell seems relentlessly cheery. Her parents—Ms. Stevens and her husband, Leigh—seem to share her sense of humor. Cancer jokes aren’t out of bounds.
“It’s either laugh or cry and we choose to laugh,” says Mr. Stevens, a 67-year-old retired Boeing computer programmer. But ask him how he copes and he pauses. “There are actually days I don’t cry,” he says.
Ms. Caldwell and her husband have two children. Maggie recently turned 4; James is 8. Her husband—James, who goes by J—picks up a lot of the parenting work when she is too fatigued or travels to a conference or to lobby Congress as part of her advocacy work. He comes to treatments and doctor appointments.
“J is my rock,” says Ms. Caldwell. “Divorce in the cancer world is ridiculously common. But I have never had any worries that J would cut and run.”
The hardest part, Ms. Caldwell says, is knowing that death is coming and being able to explain that to her children.
“Maggie is so small, she doesn’t remember a time when Mom didn’t have cancer,” she says. “Jim understands that we don’t know how long Mom has.” Her son talks about wanting to be a cancer researcher, about finding a cure for his mom.
Ms. Caldwell was 37 when she found a lump in her breast. She told her parents the news over the phone the day she was diagnosed. “They were scared, and supportive, asking how they could help and offering to watch the kids and bring us food,” she recalls. When she found out a week later the cancer had spread, she was too emotional to tell them and had her sister break the news.
Edmond Marzbani, medical director of oncology at Seattle’s Northwest Hospital & Medical Center, is Ms. Caldwell and Ms. Stevens’ oncologist. ‘They look out for each other. They’re fairly well versed in each other’s medical care,’ he says of the two patients. ENLARGE
Edmond Marzbani, medical director of oncology at Seattle’s Northwest Hospital & Medical Center, is Ms. Caldwell and Ms. Stevens’ oncologist. ‘They look out for each other. They’re fairly well versed in each other’s medical care,’ he says of the two patients. Photo: Edmond Marzbani
Ms. Caldwell has an unusual neuroendocrine form of breast cancer which usually starts in the pancreas or lungs. Dr. Marzbani recommended aggressive treatment. She had a harsh regimen of chemotherapy for three months. A single mastectomy was followed by radiation to the chest wall in the fall of 2014.
In April Ms. Caldwell learned the cancer had spread to her brain and liver. She underwent radiation therapy on her brain to shrink the five tumors found there. Over the summer eight more were found in her brain. She underwent a second round of chemotherapy to combat the liver tumors.
Around the same time, Ms. Caldwell got a Facebook message from her mother informing her she had a breast biopsy. “I was like, ‘Mom, you don’t tell me that by Facebook!” She immediately texted Dr. Marzbani. “If my mom has cancer, can you see her next week?”
Ms. Stevens’ cancer hadn’t spread to her lymph nodes, which means there is a lower risk of it coming back as metastatic cancer. But it was very aggressive. She had a lumpectomy in August. She started her chemotherapy in September just as Ms. Caldwell’s treatments were ending. “We joked about doing chemo in adjacent rooms,” Ms. Caldwell says.
In November, Ms. Stevens was in the hospital for her final chemotherapy treatment. Ms. Caldwell jumped up to get her mother a blanket.
“Do you know where it is?” her mom asks.
“Of course!” Ms. Caldwell exclaims.
Beth Caldwell, top right, and her husband, J, in a selfie with their children Jim, 8, and Maggie, 4, from their family trip to Disneyland last year. Ms. Caldwell, who has metastatic breast cancer, says it is important to her to make plans and travel. ‘I’m going to have future things to look forward to. It helps you keep going,’ she says. ENLARGE
Beth Caldwell, top right, and her husband, J, in a selfie with their children Jim, 8, and Maggie, 4, from their family trip to Disneyland last year. Ms. Caldwell, who has metastatic breast cancer, says it is important to her to make plans and travel. ‘I’m going to have future things to look forward to. It helps you keep going,’ she says. Photo: Beth Caldwell
When Ms. Stevens’ hair started falling out from chemotherapy, her daughter told her to just shave it off. The mother felt devastated, however, and called her daughter and said, “When I look in the mirror I see an old man.”
“We got a wig that made her feel human again,” Ms. Caldwell says. “It looks great on her.”
Ms. Stevens says it has been tremendously helpful having a daughter who knows the ins and outs of cancer. “It’s been nice for me in that way but it has been hell having a daughter with cancer,” she says. “You never expect your kids to die like that.”
The chemotherapy has been rough on Ms. Stevens. The side effects, such as fatigue and nausea, have kept her mostly home. She has been hospitalized twice for fevers. Last week she saw her radiologist. They want her to start radiation treatments soon.
“I’m going to stop treatment in January but that doesn’t mean everything is OK,” Ms. Stevens says. “It just means we’re going to keep testing and testing and testing to make sure” it doesn’t return.
The five-year survival rate for the type of breast cancer Ms. Stevens has is about 75%, Dr. Marzbani says.
Ms. Caldwell started an oral chemotherapy pill called Xeloda in October. It is gentler than the intravenous chemo she previously had and can penetrate the blood-brain barrier. Preliminary results look good. A brain MRI last week showed the brain tumors appeared to be gone. It was the best news she has had in a while.
“Her most recent scans look promising,” Dr. Marzbani says.
Her mom was ecstatic. “We really hope it continues to work and that she can hold it off,” says Ms. Stevens. “We’re still living under the pall of her dying. I think I will be more relaxed or not quite as stressed once we know that my half of the problem is gone. But of course there is the constant strain of her half of the problem.”
Little things keep Ms. Caldwell occupied. She talks about middle schools for her son. Next year the family has booked a cruise from New York to England and Scotland. “It’s always in the back of your mind that this may not happen,” she says. “But you plan it anyway.”
After Ms. Caldwell was first diagnosed, friends of hers were planning a group Caribbean cruise and asked if she and her husband wanted to come. That was 18 months away. “It felt like it was a way of saying, I’m not just going to live in this awful moment. I’m going to have future things to look forward to. It helps you keep going.”
Next month they will go on that cruise. Her parents will baby-sit.
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Please visit our main site at http://www.a4bc.org. There are many features and important information.
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Please consider volunteering your time. We need help managing office issues, assisting in projects, event planning, fundraising, marketing, social media, action campaigns, and with web site content. There are also small projects that you can help with. Just let us know what you are interested in doing, your time constraints and together we will make it happen.
We also have openings for volunteers and/or scholarships who advocates who want to attend the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, YSC, AACR, NBCC, ASCO, Breast Cancer Symposiums, Metastatic Conferences, as well as other lectures and meetings where we will help pay based on your needs and have you represent A4BC. You can write about your experience at these great meetings. Feel free to suggest one that you are interested in and contact us!
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This is an article taken from “Terri Gruca, KVUE 9:08 p.m. CDT June 5, 2015.
Metastatic breast cancer has no cure. Every year 40,000 people die because of it, but it is rarely talked about. A Cedar Park mom decided to change that. Her video is now being shared around the world”No one wants to hear they have cancer, much less that it’s terminal. A Cedar Park mom has turned that diagnosis into her mission. And her message is spreading around the world.
What started as a simple gesture to make people aware is turning into a worldwide lesson.
Holley Kitchen was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer at age 39. After a double mastectomy, chemo and radiation she thought she was cancer free. A year later she found out it had spread to her spine and bones.
“I think it resonates with people because it’s honest. It’s what people don’t want to say what people don’t want to hear,” she said.
Every year 40,000 people die every year with metastatic breast cancer, and there is no cure.
“It’s my life and I’m going to make the best of it,” she said.
Like many people Holley was totally unaware. Her video had been viewed millions of times in 24 hours.”
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.kvue.com
To see this powerful video that tells the truth about this disease go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDQ0FjP7J-c&feature=youtu.be&a=
You can also go to Hollly’s Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/HolleyKitchenCancerLifer?fref=ts
Go here to view Holley’s video on Facebook
I truly feel empowered by the amount of love and understanding that I am receiving from my family and good friends as a result of blogging my true thoughts and emotions. I am so uplifted by all the love and support coming my way.
After facing my fears and shedding many tears, there is plenty to be grateful for and inspired about. My fearless friend is strong as an ox. She makes me laugh and my time with her is wonderful. Although she had a very rough week, the treatment is working. She is optimistic and so am I. 
While still depressed, I am confident I am on the road to recovering from it. With the incredible help of my family and friends, plus tons of resources, all will be well.
Some days everything looks bleak. But life is full of surprises. I am not alone. It’s time to throw away the pity party and look towards the future. I refuse to let everything drag me down when I have so much love and support that I can count on.
And don’t worry. There is still plenty to write and complain about. But today I am going to live in the moment. I will continue to remind myself to approach each day with ease and joy. Sometimes it’s easier said then done but I will keep on trying.
It’s been the most difficult New Year that I have ever experienced. On a personal level I am trying to approach this year with ease and joy. It’s been two years since Li died and I am drowning in depression. Not sure whether anything I am doing is worth anything. I have never worked so hard without feeling any reward. When I was volunteering at least I felt worthwhile every day helping people right in front of me. I have so many important friends on social media and I have been so fortunate to meet so many special people as a result, but sometimes it’s so hard to keep up with all the information especially as I try to simplify everything.
Meanwhile my very close friend has brain mets and just finished whole brain radiation and it’s just so unfair. I wish the treatment wasn’t so tiring for her. I am so grateful for her friendship and I try to do whatever I can to help but she just doesn’t deserve to be going through all of this. I am glad that we live close to each other and I love getting together especially walking with my dog Shelby to visit.
Jada my friend on Twitter died at age 34. I only knew her through Twitter. She touched so many of us in the breast cancer social media community. She was so young and beautiful. Here is a stunning picture of her pre-cancer. I did some calculations (hoping my chemobrain math is still working) starting with the fact that there are 450,000 deaths a year from metastatic breast cancer (Source: GLOBOCAN 2008), I calculated that Jada is one of the 1238 people all over the world that died on Jan 28th because of Metastatic Breast Cancer. That’s over 51 deaths every hour.
People have other cancers that are just as important. Yet the Official Pancreatic Cancer Action (PCA) came out with an ad campaign with a bald women’s picture saying, “I wish I had breast cancer.” Many of us connected with social media were outraged. The PCA really doesn’t understand breast cancer statistics. The pancreatic ad also made me sad. My dad died from pancreatic cancer and I know that the disease is usually caught at Stage !V. I did some calculations and discovered that about 22 people die a day from pancreatic cancer in the UK while about 32 women die a day from breast cancer in the UK. I know they wanted to raise awareness for pancreatic cancer but I wish they would come up with a new ad and really raise awareness. Once again we need to be united when it comes to all cancers.
On a personal note I am thinking that maybe it’s the medicine I am taking that is making me extra depressed. I took the awful tamoxifen for five years. Now with the ATLAS and aTTom studies at ASCO 2013, they are recommending taking tamoxifen for ten years instead of five. My oncologist suggested I try raloxifene (Evista) which is supposed to be a “tamoxifen light.” When I first took it, I was amazed that there were no side effects. But during my third month on it, I started getting non-stop hot flashes again, blurry vision, and feeling horribly depressed.
I am ER+, PR-, Her 2-. Every study I have read about tamoxifen (for example: http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/23/4/931.long) and PR- when ER+ states that this is known to be resistant to tamoxifen. In San Antonio sitting next to Dr Dana I appreciated when she pointed to the speaker who I believe was Jason S. Carroll, PhD right as he said “ER+/PR- responds poorly to tamoxifen.” Thank you Dr. Dana for acknowledging the research I discussed with you about this, because I have heard different opinions from doctors. Unfortunately the data presented didn’t have the study published. I have suffered with this stupid drug especially being spooked by a recurrence of my breast cancer after not taking the tamoxifen.
I apologize for those who don’t know theses technical things about breast cancer and to those who do since only 3-5% of cases are ER+ PR-. and there are very few studies since it’s not common. I miss being able to talk about all of this with Li. We loved discovering all the important information related to our cases. Because she was triple negative early on we didn’t understand that treatment options are limited. When she started hospice we both laughed at how much we thought we understood about breast cancer at the beginning when we went through chemo together. We both realized how little we knew until this disease took over our lives.
The official Advocates 4 Breast Cancer website is coming together, yet we hit an unfortunate snag. Without getting too detailed, we needed to change the domain hosting company to get ready to launch the new site. Our emails had to go with the domain server and due to technical issues some emails were lost and lots of time was spent on the issue. The problem took a huge chunk of time glued to the phone and computer with support, with lost emails and all sorts of computer issues. Today a miracle happened and after having the engineers look in to the issue, crossing my fingers, I put the settings in and the current mail is working. I apologize to everyone who may have tried to contact me and thought I didn’t respond due to having my email missing.
So to recap. I got very depressed taking a medication hoping to avoid another breast cancer recurrence that I am not sure can help me anyway. With research and a note to my oncologist, I just stopped taking the medicine. Now I hate having to consider taking an antidepressant and I hope the new one works. That’s the problem with medications. Each one causes the need for another one and then it goes on and on. I have had problems with many ones I’ve tried because they made me sick.
Time has been lost over these technical problems with the web site. So please bear with us as we iron out issues.I personally have to make going to the gym a priority and make sure I am taking care of myself. It’s so hard with so many problems all over me. I also have to do another surgery on my breast in a few weeks. I could start another rant about my health insurance especially because it’s gone up 40% in price over the past few years including a recent 15% hike. It’s frustrating financially, time-consuming and I know I am not alone. Scorchy wrote a post that had me in tears about her issues and the financial drain called The Road to Ruin. Yet I am so grateful that I have insurance and my awesome plastic surgeon accepts it. She has fixed some previously botched work. This will be my ninth surgery on my breast, but I am lucky I tolerate surgery very well and I trust Dr. La Via. I love my docs.
I am very upset about my close friend’s metastatic cancer and brain mets. I am grateful that she still keeps me laughing even through difficult circumstances. She is amazing. I luckily have lots of support from family and friends and I know that what I mostly need to do is breathe and appreciate things that really matter. I think the hardest part is feeling no control over outside events. It’s such a combination of frustrating events and I just have to pass through this, one step at a time. With all that is going on I know that I must make the most out of every day and not let these things drag me down.
It’s so important to be in the moment and find daily joy in things. So with that in mind I remind everyone reading and myself that sometimes things can get overwhelming. I will trust that everything will sort itself out and try to find joy in things again. It’s best to allow myself to understand that’s all I can do is keep going and know that things will get better.
Luckily I have Shelby and she is a great source of joy in my life. I thank Li every day for the gift of Shelby. I made a silly movie trailer of Shelby with my iMovie program that makes me smile. I couldn’t get the program to make things perfect, but that’s OK. I have to let go of being a perfectionist. I hope it makes you smile.
It was extremely exciting being at the 36th annual Breast Cancer Symposium in San Antonio (SABCS). I was hoping to go on Twitter during the Symposium but was having a lot of trouble during the conference with the wifi signal. I decided to concentrate on the presentations and when I could find information being reported on them I knew that those that could not hear the presentations live wanted to know what was happening there. All of the speakers were incredible. There are tons of studies that were reported in the news that I tried to “scoop” as many as I could at: Breast Cancer News.
As much as I try to deny that there is any left over chemobrain from the dose-dense ACT (Adriamycin, Cytoxan, Taxol) chemotherapy that I did for treatment of my primary breast cancer in 2005, I have to admit that as much as I want to have my brain functioning at full capacity, there are residual effects that happen and I can’t hold so much information all at once. At times things slip away. I have particularly noticed that I make errors with numbers. With that in mind I accept my limitations. I tried to be as present as I could during the conference, and I hope to be careful when putting dates with numbers so as not to make careless errors. I plan to attend again next year and I am determined to keep myself on the Twitter feed while I take in the presentations and have an assistant help in finding the articles that represent the presentations so that those who can’t attend can get the information.
If I wait too long to blog about SABCS I know that I will write something so long that it will be too much to read. I am going to post more than one post so that I can keep this at a reasonable length. I am also going to suggest some great links to other blogs and if you wish to follow them just click on the ones that are highlighted in a different color and it will take you to these other great places for information. To read some terrific explanations of some of the studies take a look at Dr. Susan Love’s Act with Love Blog, San Antonio Breast Symposium Day 1 – Day 3, with a great round up including the Survivorship Presentation on Day 3, #BCSM blog presentations by Dr. Julie Gralow, SABCS Highlights, and SABCS Highlights by Dr. Robert S. Miller.
I did miss seeing Dr. Susan Love at the conference live but her round up of SABCS is amazing! I saw Dr. Gralow presenting and had the good fortune to meet Dr. Miller in person. I loved seeing the people I know from social media live at the conference. It turns out, thanks to connections on Twitter, that I was fortunate to share my room with a remarkable breast surgeon, Dr. Dana Abraham. It’s so exciting to meet doctors that care about patients and want to understand this disease from their perspective. It is wonderful to see friends who are fellow patient advocates. I have some photos here. If I mention all the names this will really get very long!
Today, I want to concentrate on my takeaway from all the presentations from the perspective of a patient advocate. One of my favorite parts of the conference was the Case Discussions where the panelists included doctors who are experts in medical oncology, radiotherapy, and they also included a patient advocate. Here, doctors come up to the mike and present real case studies and the panelists give opinions and their ideas about what should be done about the cases presented.
It was exciting to see that the doctors included a patient advocate on the panel as it’s becoming clear to me that doctors are learning a lot from patient advocates. I am so impressed with how hard these medical professionals work to understand and help their patients. I am also very impressed with how many doctors are reaching out to patients with social media and including patient advocates by starting to bring them in to the conversation. Listening to the panel of experts recommending treatments, especially keeping track of all the trials that were being presented at the conference, was extremely impressive. Both the doctors and the patient advocates tried to come up with ways to help and I was really impressed with the fact that the atmosphere was focused on presenting all of the evidenced based information to patients about their options and making sure that patients are part of the process in deciding what they do for their treatment.
I think it’s so important that patients make sure they are working with a doctor who keeps up with the latest information available for their specific case and allows the patient to make informed decisions by presenting the patient all the options. When a patient is diagnosed at any stage of breast cancer, there is so much information and it’s hard to sort it all out. Yet if a doctor just dictates the treatment without explaining the pros and cons of all the options, the patient is not being allowed patients to understand fully what choices are available. As patient advocates we want to know as much as we can about this disease because one size does not fit all. Every case is unique.
I was struck by a doctor who had a patient that was having trouble taking her tamoxifen. Her doctor really cared about trying to have her patient be compliant and the patient was having terrible trouble with the side effects. With this case the doctors had some ideas for medications and the patient advocate (Beverly Canin) also recommended alternative therapies. What struck me most was how compassionate the doctors were as they presented their cases as well as the suggestions coming from the panelist, especially when using all the trials presented at SABCS.
For anyone who has breast cancer, has been in treatment, or is in treatment for breast cancer and knows first hand about these awful side effects from so many treatments they can consider alternative complimentary treatments. A great resource for complimentary and alternative therapies is The Annie Appleseed Project,
In contrast to the incredible compassion that I saw from so many doctors, I saw a different approach from one of the case study presentations that had to do with AI’s and compliance of patients. The presenter seemed to want to be dismissive of the patient’s complaints about side effects with these medications. Without calling out the specific study or doctor presenting it, I was disturbed by his lack of compassion and how much he gave the impression that the side effects and his data seemed to imply the effects were probably more in the patients mind than as a result of the medication. Here was an example where a doctor needs to be more like the incredible doctors I was surrounded by as far as being compassionate and realizing these side effects are real.
I also love attending the Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation (ABCF) Hot Topics Mentor Sessions. They always have the best speakers reviewing many of the case studies presented during the day as well as other topics of interest to them. One of the panel discussions was taped and to see this great presentation go to: Breast Cancer Answers’ Video of SABCS Hot Topic Mentor Sessions.
One of the patient advocate questions dealt with asking what we can do as advocates. Clifford A. Hudis, MD the President of ASCO, Chief of Breast Cancer Medicine Service and an attending physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, had recommended that we keep writing to congress.
I am a member of ASCO in Action and I recommend that everyone interested in being an advocate join this group. They give action alerts and pre-written letters to congress about issues important to all of us, especially in reference to oncology. I always take the letters and when they say “As an oncologist in your district” I change the words to “As a patient of an oncologist in your district” and send the letters off to my representatives. Another important organization to pay attention to is Breast Cancer Action. They also have important actions and letters that impact the breast cancer community. At Advocates 4 Breast Cancer we are working toward trying to get a program to make it easy for other advocates to write these letters, but for now please stay posted on this site for alerts to letters that we recommend you write. I was in agreement with Clifford Hudis, MD’s observation that he hears back from every person we write to in Congress. I send them via email and I am glad that they are paying attention.
I was also moved by a talk that Cate Edwards (daughter of the late Elizabeth Edwards) gave during a dinner with Novartis Oncology about her involvement with metastatic disease, recognizing the importance of the patient as well as the caretakers. Everyone knows how passionate I am about making sure no one with Metastatic Breast Cancer is forgotten.
As breast cancer patient advocates Stages 0-4, we must always put those with Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) first and foremost in our minds and they should never be left to feel abandoned or alone. I wish there had been more at the conference focused on metastatic disease. There were some studies, but next year I’d like to see a stronger focus on research for MBC.
Sequestration has taken its toll of health science at the NIH and NCI. During the year things had to be scaled back 10-15% in labs. This hurts research because science relies on heavy funding. Once again this is where we as patient advocates in the US must keep paying attention to what is happening with the budget in congress and keep writing to congress to have our voices heard.
I am going to end this post as I will be posting some more thoughts in another installment. What a thrill it was to attend this conference live. I am also so grateful for the one-on-one meetings that I got to have with my fellow advocates and doctors.
We all know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. There’s pink everywhere and all sorts of breast cancer awareness campaigns. In 2009 Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) got one day for awareness. Thanks to the efforts of 9 metastatic patients and countless others, they got congress to designate October 13th as Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day. It’s a start. “Breast Cancer Awareness” without “Mets Awareness” is not awareness at all. Now we need everyone to be aware of MBC all year-long. Every day should be Metastatic Breast Cancer Day.
Especially in October (Breast Cancer Awareness Month) there have been lots of questioning of the words, the color and what really matters. There’s frustration in the breast cancer community because breast cancer has been painted with survivors and death rates trending in a favorable direction. Sadly when it comes to MBC and death rates we haven’t come very far.
For example in the United States alone in 1991 there were about 112 deaths from breast cancer a day. This year there are about 108 deaths a day in the US. While those 4 lives a day are very important people I don’t think that in over 20 years preventing 4 deaths a day is tremendous progress in this country. There are about 155,000 people living with MBC in the US a year. There are almost 40,000 deaths a year from MBC in the US and around 400 of these deaths are men.
Almost 30% of all breast cancers become metastatic. Some start out with “mets” (about 6-10% of cases) but if you get breast cancer at an earlier stage there’s up to a 30% chance that you will become metastatic. Those who have MBC know this. We still don’t know the cause of many breast cancers and we also don’t know why breast cancer patients become metastatic.
There is no cure for MBC. There are many drugs that can extend lives for years, but treatment is life long switching from drugs that work for a period of time until a drug no longer works. Every case is different and there are different types with some types more difficult to treat than others.
What we do know is that MBC kills very special people. When it comes to breast cancer, people’s stories paint the picture of what happens with this disease. One of them was my fearless friend Li Bailey. In our world of social media very few people knew her. She didn’t have a blog, Facebook page or Twitter account. She had Triple Negative (TNBC) MBC and there were fewer options for her treatment. She knew every detail of her case, and was a very sharp ePatient.
Li and I went through our primary chemo together at the same time. We got together a lot as friends and it was a relief that I wasn’t bald alone. We learned so much about breast cancer together. I had a local recurrence. Today I am NED (no evidence of disease). She had a mets recurrence on her birthday, February 19, 2009. She danced in to the light on January 6, 2012. She went through various treatment options that were wonderful when they worked. Having to change regimens is a harsh reality for anyone with mets. While my friend did not live as long as I would have liked with mets, there are so many cases with different outcomes. I have lots of friends that respond longer to treatments who are living with mets for a very long time.
Li had a wonderful ability of living in the moment with me on a great day. I’m not saying there weren’t some bad ones but we made a pact that on great ones we would be in the moment.
One of the best days was when Li got her dog Shelby as a puppy after we finished our primary chemo. I am so grateful that she chose me to take care of her dog. I loved visiting her and Shelby so many times. Shelby helps me every day keeping memories of Li alive. She is such a wonderful gift. I know Li would be proud of how well Shelby is doing, while she is a constant source of joy in my life.
There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of Li and all my mets sisters living and dying from MBC. I was very lucky that Li let me in to her life with mets and accepted my help. It’s so rewarding to able to help. Li helped me a lot too. She never missed being with me for my many surgeries and I was with her for hers. Having one day for MBC awareness is a start, but we have a long way to go and there should be many more days of awareness for MBC. As patient advocates we have to make metastatic research a priority. We must stop this terrible disease and prevent it from spreading to other organs. This research will hopefully lead to helping end all cancers.
I received this in an email yesterday from Dr. Susan Love’s Research Foundation. Leave it to Dr. Susan Love to bring together Susan G. Komen, the Young Survival Coalition, and the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation to collaborate on the collateral damage and side effects of Breast Cancer as part of the Health of Women (HOW) study. This is so exciting to have breast cancer organizations working together. Dr. Susan Love not only wrote about this concept but she is taking action.
There’s still time to participate with questions in this study so please read the release that Dr. Susan Love sent and get all of this great information including how you can join the conversation with Dr. Susan Love on Facebook, Wed October 2 at 9am Pacific Time and/or Twitter at 1:00 Pacific time.
We’re pleased to announce the groundbreaking collaboration of three breast cancer powerhouses to document the short- and long-term physical and emotional side effects of breast cancer treatments as part of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation’s Health of Women [HOW] Study.
Those of you who have been following Dr. Love’s recent blog posts are aware of the outpouring of interest in documenting the collateral damage of today’s breast cancer treatments and many of you have already participated by providing key questions about your own experiences.
More data needs to be collected to provide the scientific community with the most robust cohort from which to derive and analyze the true cost of the cure. In the spirit of collaboration, the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation reached out to Susan G. Komen and Young Survival Coalition as well as other advocacy groups to ask for their help in spreading the word.
Susan G. Komen and Young Survival Coalition have agreed and are inviting their constituents to share their experiences with collateral damage from treatment and to participate in the HOW Study as a means of identifying the causes of, and prevention strategies for breast cancer. This groundbreaking collaboration also demonstrates that different breast cancer organizations can work together on important issues. We welcome all breast cancer and cancer groups to join us.
Questions about collateral damage from breast cancer can be submitted through October to http://www.questionthecure.org. Anyone interested in being part of this initiative can register for the Health of Women [HOW] Study and complete the basic questionnaires on personal health and/or breast cancer diagnoses. When the collateral damage module is complete and online, participants will be notified by email.
To give you an opportunity to learn more about this groundbreaking collaboration, Dr. Susan Love will host a Facebook chat (Wednesday, October 2 at 9:00 a.m. PDT) and a Twitter chat (Wednesday, October 2 at 1:00 p.m. PDT).
As the summer wanes and October looms, I am struck once again about the fragmentation of the breast cancer advocacy movement. The history of activism dates well back to 1952 and the American Cancer Society’s Reach to Recovery when a doctor had to give permission for a post mastectomy woman to be seen by a volunteer, lest she be too distressed by the encounter. The Susan G Komen Foundation (now Komen for the Cure) started in 1983 to raise awareness. Others, such as the Women’s Community Cancer Project (Cambridge, Massachusetts), the Women’s Cancer Resource Center (Oakland, California), Breast Cancer Action (San Francisco), Y Me (Chicago), Mautner Project for Lesbians with Cancer (Washington, D.C.), and NABCO (New York) were focused on education and political action. As these groups sprang up around the country, it served as a tipping point in the battle for attention to the problem of breast cancer. These heady days led to the for the formation of the National Breast Coalition (1991), Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program (1992), the National Action Plan on Breast Cancer (1993), the California Breast Cancer Research Program (1993) and the Breast Cancer Stamp (1998). Many good women and men contributed to these early successes and we stand on their shoulders and by their sides.
Now as we head into October, anticipating the arrival of the pink tsunami, in some ways it feels like the original battle to end breast cancer has been co-opted by these annual celebrations of survival. The messages are incessantly upbeat and rarely mention that many women still go on to metastasize, many still die, and the “survivors” live with a new normal based on the collateral damage caused by their treatments. My recent experience with Leukemia has made me impatient and dissatisfied with the status quo. While many programs, such as the National Breast Cancer Coalition’s Deadline 2020 and our own Army of Women, are valiant efforts to move us to the goal, it is going to take more than that to get there.
The goal of ending breast cancer is too important to leave to any one group or approach. I think it’s time for the breast cancer organizations and foundations to start working together on projects that make sense. We need to find opportunities to collaborate and speak with one voice. We don’t need to agree on everything, but we do need to rise above our differences to find ways and projects that we can work on collectively. Only by working together will we ever be able to achieve the overriding goal we all share– a future without breast cancer!
Hi Everyone! Metavivor is having a Nationwide call for Volunteers!
MAJOR EVENT TO BRING ATTENTION TO THE NEEDS OF THE METASTATIC BREAST CANCER COMMUNITY. BECAUSE. IT’S TIME….
METAvivor Awareness Campaign 2014
Sea to Sea for MBC
Metavivor is now accepting applications for volunteers! Even if you can only spare some small time to volunteer Metavivor needs you! No deed is too big or too small. If you care about Metastatic Breast Cancer, this is worth your time to help.
Event Overview: On February 1, 2014 breast cancer widower Marine Corps LtCol Joseph Fagan will depart San Diego CA, arriving in New York City on Father’s Day weekend. Along the way Joe will meet with researchers, including METAvivor grant recipients, dedicated to improving the lives of metastatic patients.
Joe’s involvement is very personal. In 2010, his wife Lainie Fagan was 29 years old and pregnant with their first child. At 34 weeks she was told her cancer had metastasized and that their child would need to be delivered early so that she could begin treatment. JJ was born October 1, 2010, but tragically it was too late for Lainie; Joe and JJ lost their beloved wife and mother only nine months later. Joe is passionate and determined to do his part so that others can be spared such a devastating loss.
Intent of Event – Awareness and Fundraising: Over 122 days Joe will run 3,845 miles, transiting twelve states and meeting with metastasis researchers, metastatic patients and family members. Public speaking engagements at various locations and the filming of his journey for purpose of a documentary will bring significant attention to metastatic breast cancer and give voice to a patient community that is seldom heard. A coinciding fundraising campaign will bring in valuable dollars to help fund METAvivor’s 2014 research grant cycle, estimated at $320,000.
Opportunities for Volunteers: To maximize the effectiveness of the awareness and fundraising campaigns, Metavivor will need volunteers nationwide in many different capacities.
Those wishing to volunteer should send an email with their name, email address and phone number to the volunteer coordinator: dewaynewilcher@yahoo.com.
Note: Committees are being formed now.
| Sponsorship* | Logistics* | Volunteers* | Media Advertisement* |
| Donations in Kind | Route Organization | Orientation | Advertising |
| Major Sponsors | Transportation RV | Organizational Coordinators | Photography |
| Donors | Transportation Flights | Regional Coordinators | Documentary |
| Merchandising | Run Team Coordinator | Local Volunteer Coordinators | Ceremonial Start San Diego |
| Lodging | Volunteer Hours Cataloger | Ceremonial Celebration NYC | |
| Meal Coordination | Research Center Stops | ||
| Project Light Up | Social Media | ||
| Running Gear | Homecoming Annapolis |
You can also help by going to Metavivor’s Facebook page for this event and click “like”, while the page is still under construction. Go to: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sea-To-Sea-for-MBC/223255354499874
Follow on twitter so you will see the very first tweet! @C2C4MBC is the official twitter account for this event.
Note from CJ-one of the co-founders of METAvivor:
One quick clarification. The Ambassador Program was launched in 2013 as part of METAvivor’s long-planned national expansion program. It is completely independent of Sea to Sea for MBC, although many volunteers with the Ambassador Program are volunteering to help with the Run as well. The Run is an exciting venture that will occur in 2014. The Ambassador Program is a permanent part of METAvivor and is run by METAvivor Board Member, Lori Marx-Rubiner. Volunteering for either program does not automatically volunteer you for the other. Those wishing to volunteer for the Ambassador program should contact the Director of that program, Lori Marx-Rubiner at regrounding@yahoo.com. Thanks!
Hi Everyone! There’s a beautiful love story between Angelo Merendino and his wife Jen. Angelo is an extremely talented photographer. He was also an incredible husband to his wife Jen who got metastatic breast cancer. He photographed her as she lived with this disease all the while loving and caring for her in such a special way. He has a web site that you will find fascinating at: http://mywifesfightwithbreastcancer.com/, where you can read and find out much more about this beautiful story as well as see some incredible photography.
Angelo Merendino’s Book is Now Available for Sale!
I am proud to announce that our story is now available in digital book format! Aside from taking care of Jennifer, putting this book together has been the biggest challenge of my life. More than a story about loss, this is a story about love and life. Above all else I have realized that this book is a love letter from me to Jen.
The book includes many photographs that have not been shown anywhere, as well as a Resources section, audio narrations and videos. It is available in English, Italian, Spanish, French, German and Russian. (Note that if you are hoping to view the book on an iPad, be aware that audio and visual elements will not function. I am currently waiting for approval from Apple on the full-featured, iPad-specific eBook. Please check my website again soon for details on this release.)
Fifty percent of the net profits of all book sales will be donated to The Love You Share*, a non-profit organization I am starting in honor of Jennifer. The mission of The Love You Share is to provide financial assistance to cancer patients in need while they are receiving treatment for cancer. The hope is that by sending a gift card from a local grocery delivery service and reimbursing patients for transportation costs to and from hospital and doctor appointments, The Love You Share will be able to make life easier, even if only for a short time, for someone who is fighting for her life.
Available in English, Italian, Spanish, French, German and Russian.
*The Love You Share has applied to the Internal Revenue Service for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Donations to The Love You Share are not currently tax-deductible while its application is pending. If The Love You Share receives tax-exempt status, donations received while its application was pending may be treated as tax-deductible contributions retroactive to the date of its formation.
To Buy this Great Book
I have written about my passion (see: While Flying – Frustration surrounds Me ) for doing everything I can to advocate for Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC). 6-10% of breast cancer patients are initially diagnosed at Stage IV (MBC). 30% of all breast cancer patients initially diagnosed with early stage breast cancer will eventually metastasize (or have what some of us call mets).
In the US alone 1 woman dies every 14 minutes of MBC. I have many friends now who have MBC. Metavivor is an organization that I have great respect for. Like Advocates 4 Breast Cancer they are an all-volunteer, patient-founded organization. They are devoted to raising awareness about metastatic breast cancer, funding vital MBC research and they promote the concept that 30% of every organization’s breast cancer research funds should be devoted to MBC research.
Right now only 2% of all funds for breast cancer organizations go to MBC research. This has to change. As the Executive Director of Advocates 4 Breast Cancer (A4BC), I am proud that our organization is listening to Metavivor. We are devoting 30% of our funds each year to MBC research. We hope that other non-profits will follow our example and recognize how important it is for all breast cancer organizations to fund MBC.
As an update to A4BC, we are in the process of getting our official site up and we are working around the clock to have it done. We are now on Facebook. Thank you everyone for liking the page and if you haven’t seen it, please have a look and “like” the page to stay updated. Please click on: https://www.facebook.com/advocates4breastcancer.
I am haunted by the death of my very good friend Li Bailey, and my other friends who have died from MBC. Unfortunately this list keeps growing. I also hate that many of my friends have recently become part of the 30% joining my other friends who have MBC. This disease robs so many of so much. We must have MBC research that continues to bring about “quality of life” medications that will extend everyone’s lives for years (not just weeks or months). Forty thousand women in the US alone will die from MBC this year.
Metavivor is also looking for volunteers. They have a fantastic campaign called “Metavivor on the Move.”, inviting people to join the volunteer team. They are establishing 10 regional teams, with representatives from every state, plus volunteers in Canada. Although I have a very full plate, I am part of the volunteer team doing what I can to help with Metavivor. If you would like to volunteer to help in any capacity of your choosing, send an email to CJ@METAvivor.org
To learn more about MBC please check out Nancy’s Point at: http://nancyspoint.com/mets/
To learn more about METAvivor, please visit their website here: www.metavivor.org.
Happy Father’s Day dad. I wonder where you are and whether you and my brother still think about legal cases. I know you both are watching over me as I have taken over responsibilities that I never thought would be mine. I am grateful you taught me how to take care of things and both of you always helped me when I needed help. I think a lot of when you were sick dad and the night before your last night I lied to you when I went to the hospital and told you I slept and woke up early at four in the morning to be with you. I really was at the hospital lounge so you thought I slept because I couldn’t sleep knowing you were alone and very sick in the hospital. I am glad you didn’t know you had cancer for the last 6 months of your life and only found out 10 days before you died.
You said you were tired and a little under the weather but you didn’t have to suffer as long by not knowing. I was so glad I came to see you in the hospital and we had some time alone so I could read you the card I made for your surprise birthday party that we couldn’t have. I am glad we all could come together by your bedside and have everyone holding hands. We were full circle with almost all of your children and grandchildren united in our love for you.
Happy Fathers Day to my older brother! I really miss you so much. I was so lucky that you were always there for me whenever I needed you. I know you were very ill but I thank you for helping me get my paperwork done. I also loved getting to work in your legal office and I treasure the days you took me to court with you so I could see all the great work you did. I kept my promise to you and found the most precious thing you asked me to search for. I know the chemo was tough, but I thank you for letting me go with you, as I understood because I did chemo too. I only wish you didn’t have so many metastatic tumors that grew so fast which could barely be contained.
I still am so surprised you died on Father’s Day, since being a fantastic dad was so important to you and I know how much you loved all of your children and grandchildren. You worked so hard to provide for them and we know how difficult it was for you to have the cruel disease of esophageal cancer take over your body and mind. You stayed with us as long as you could and I hope wherever you are, please know how much we love and miss you. We had such a special bond and a great childhood.
I miss your humor and way of uniting everyone for all the important times. It’s hard without you, but please know I have kept every promise that we spoke about and you and dad are always with me and the rest of the family in spirit.
This was an incredible week for breast cancer patients, advocates, doctors, bloggers, and what has happened in breast cancer news and social media. I started on Twitter a year ago and for those of you who don’t know about the format, Twitter is a place where you pick a name for yourself (mine is @a4breastcancer-A4BC was taken) and then there are #hashtags which are names of groups or topics.
Because I find and put together breast cancer news articles as part of Advocates for Breast Cancer (A4BC), I created a new hashtag, #BCANS (Breast Cancer News). I am learning a lot about what ends up as news as well as trying to sort through articles that I hope will be of interest to fellow medical professionals, researchers, advocates, patients, and organizations while I try to decide what is newsworthy. This has been an incredible week of news combined with social media.
I am very proud of being part of the #BCSM (Breast Cancer Social Media) community which meets on Monday nights from 9-10 Eastern Standard time. It is an incredible group moderated by Dr. Deanna Attai (breast surgeon), Alicia Stales and Jody Schroeger and this week we had a review of what happened in breast cancer at the annual meeting of #ASCO13 ( American Society of Clinical Oncology Meeting 2013, Chicago May 30-June3). I was thrilled because I had followed and gathered #BCANS (breast cancer news) everyday at #ASCO13. I also used and followed the #ASCO13 Twitter feed.
The #BCSM meeting Monday night was so exciting because we had almost as many doctors as patients and patient advocates on the chat including the President of ASCO , Dr. Clifford Hudis (who is also the Chief of Breast Cancer Medicine at MSKCC-(Memorial Sloan Kettering), Dr. Seisenberg (oncologist), Dr. Diane Radford (breast surgeon), Dr. Bob Miller (oncologist), Dr. Matthew Katz, (radiation oncologist), Dr. Krupali (medical oncologist), Dr. Dana (breast oncologist), Dr.Anas Younes (lymphoma expert), Dr.Damodhar (surgeon), and Dr. Naoto Ueno (medical oncologist). (I hope I didn’t miss anyone and I simplified their specialties as otherwise this would be very long!) It was so exciting with all the Doctors and patients interacting, talking about the breast cancer highlights from #ASCO13.
What we discussed is in trials and things we can be hopeful for in the future as well as certain things that may impact our specific cases that we can talk to our own oncologists about. I have mentioned how impressed I am with ASCO because the organization recognizes the importance of patient advocates as well as social media and it relationship to current oncology practices.
What was so great about the #BCSM chat was that patients and doctors could come together and discuss highlights from the #ASCO13 meeting and I love that the doctors are willing to listen to patients, our thoughts, stories as well as ideas and we all learned something together. I am honored that theses doctors care about patients and come together for this type of meeting and I am so impressed with the people I am meeting as a result. To see the transcript follow this link: #BCSM Transcript- Highlights from #ASCO13
I am so excited with what’s happening with social media. I am so proud of my friend and fellow blogger Scorchy Barrington at: The Sarcastic Boob. Scorchy started a petition on change.org opposing Facebook for not allowing photographs from famed photographer David Jay, that showed post-mastectomy photos of women known as The Scar Project, because they violated Facebook’s terms of service. Imagine my delight as I am gathering the news on Wednesday and I see on my news feed an article in the Chicago Tribune that talks about Scorchy’s change.org petition, where she got over 21 thousand signatures of people who felt the pictures belonged on Facebook. I rushed to get the message out on Twitter and as I was also getting it on Facebook there were so many news feeds of articles including CBS News, FOX, The Daily News, The Daily Mail, NBC, ABC , (to name a few). coming out at once that I could hardly keep up with them. Then there was a burst of energy on Twitter and Facebook with so many people cheering for Scorchy and another great friend and blogger AnneMarie at: Chemobrain…In the Fog, started a campaign to get #Scorchy trending on Twitter.
Facebook posted this statement: “We agree that undergoing a mastectomy is a life-changing experience and that sharing photos can help raise awareness about breast cancer and support the men and women facing a diagnosis, undergoing treatment, or living with the scars of cancer. The vast majority of these kinds of photos are compliant with our policies.”
Thanks to brilliant work of Scorchy they will now show these important photos as well as Annmarie Giannino-Otis’s photos at Stupid Dumb Breast Cancer. If you haven’t seen The Scar Project photos, I recommend you look at it here: The Scar Project
Scorchy was quoted saying, “We want the world to know that breast cancer is not a pink ribbon — it is traumatic, it is life-changing, and it urgently needs a cure.”
Scorchy has breast cancer and is Stage IV. She is an amazing blogger, honest, funny, engaging and what she did with this petition and getting all of this news in mainstream media is so fantastic, because patient advocates have worked so hard to let the public know that breast cancer is so much more than a pink ribbon, while all of this “pinkwashing” about the disease distorts some of the harsh realities about breast cancer. These photographs depict real women who know the truth about mastectomies which make scars and are many times lots of surgeries (my case), with different women making difficult choices about whether to do reconstruction and some women especially who get IBC (Inflammatory Breast Cancer) can’t even try reconstruction because IBC happens on the breast skin. As I have said so many times this disease is killing one woman every 14 minutes in the US alone.
There’s a lot of “pinkwashing” of the disease and so many woman who have had breast cancer hate the color pink because of what has been done to the color by representing an oversimplification of a pretty pink disease. As a former ballerina I still love the color pink but I detest “pinkwashing.”
Getting back to this exciting week and all the action on social media, I was still so happy when I got up on Thursday after all the excitement that #Scorchy brought and while I was preparing #BCANS articles, #SCOTUS (The Supreme Court of the United States) ruling came down and 9 judges voted against Myriad genetics.
I have written about the Supreme Court Case in which Myriad Genetics was challenged because they had a patent on our human BRCA genes. This patent allowed them to be the only ones to do this gene test which kept other researchers and companies from conducting research for better tests that would help women with treatment decisions by knowing if they are at high risk of developing this genetic form of breast and ovarian cancer. While Myriad held the monopoly on the test, other companies were prevented from developing better and less expensive tests and more research into other genes.
The case originally in 2009 brought together many diverse plaintiffs in New York Federal Court that included the ACLU, the Association for Molecular Pathology, the American College of Medical Genetics, individual researchers; women’s health and breast cancer advocacy groups, including Breast Cancer Action and Our Bodies Ourselves; and women who have breast and ovarian cancer. Originally they ruled against Myriad but the case was overturned a year later in an appellate court. Absent from the list of plaintiffs was the Susan G. Komen Foundation who lists Myriad Genetics as a donor to their organization.One of the plaintiffs, Breast Cancer Action (which I am so proud to be on the Speakers Bureau) is a national grassroots education and advocacy organization working to end the breast cancer. They do not accept any donations from companies, corporations or anyone who profits from or contributes to the breast cancer epidemic.
The Supreme Court ruled against Myriad Genetics by ruling that companies cannot patent parts of naturally occurring human genes. The ruling was complex and at the heart of it was the patent, but the result will help doctors, pathology labs, research, breast and ovarian cancer patients and those at high risk for the disease and will also help make the test more affordable. The test was very expensive (over $4000.00) and many women were uninsured, and those who carried insurance while doing the test were sometimes denied payment or had very high co-pays for the test. There is already a genetics testing company based in Houston that said it would offer the test for $995.00 called DNATraits. To see the decision go to: The Association for Molecular Pathology et al. vs. Myriad Genetics .
It was so much fun for all of us to get on Social Media cheering this monumental decision of the Supreme Court. I feel so connected to so many others including breast cancer patients, patient advocates, doctors, legislators, organizations, bloggers, and of course #Scorchy, that are working every day to help other patients, make the public aware about the realities of this disease, get more funding for research especially for patients who are metastatic and doing difficult treatments every day to stay alive, and finally work to develop a vaccine that will prevent this horrible disease in the first place.
It’s been a fantastic week of news and social media. My favorite end to the week will come out soon from my fellow blogger Marie at: Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer, where she will do the weekly round-up of some of the best blogs that came out this week. It’s really a great time to be connected to so many awesome people.
I really enjoyed hearing Dr. Susan Love speak at the Inaugural Advocate Leadership Summit. For starters it was such a thrill and so exciting to see her after knowing that she went through intense treatment including chemotherapy and surgery for leukemia. I always feel so uplifted when she talks about breast cancer and opens our minds to see things with a fresh perspective. She raised some great points. I took my notes and I hope I am reflecting what she spoke about in the best way possible to help others read what she had to say.
She spoke about breast cancer today, and the damage of treatment and over diagnosis. She said with our goal of finding every tumor even those that are just DCIS and have not progressed to cancer, is like the TSA screening. We are in a climate of over treatment where we tend to slash, burn and poison. Then when we have recurrences we have done so much treatment that it could reduce the treatment’s effectiveness. She acknowledges that doctors roles are to find things. Yet 29% of cancers would not kill. Only 20 -30% will become invasive. We over treat and over test. We are in a climate of more is better. We use MRI, PET CT, and Markers. All of this equals finding reasons for treatment. So we do surgery, radiation, chemo, and hormone targeted therapy.
Yet we never think of not doing a treatment or subtracting from a treatment plan. We just throw everything we can at whatever we find. She talked about how the oncotype dx and/or the mammaprint test at least looks at whether all of this treatment is necessary. She says none of this is malicious on the doctor’s part. It’s just that no one is looking at the big picture.
For example, when patients are diagnosed, they are scared. So they listen to their doctors and do what they are told. But with all of this treatment thrown on all the over diagnostic testing and never subtracting from the treatment especially at an early stage comes in a climate of intense fear. No one is ever told about the terrible toll side effects will play on the patient from all of this slash and burn treatment. There is a huge amount of collateral damage.
Having come from doing chemotherapy herself she understands how much this type of treatment takes its toll. Side effects are always down played. No one talks about the effect of AI’s or lymphedema. At least the oncotype dx test and mammaprint test looks at whether treatments might work. It would help us to know before treatment, what all these side effects were, whether all of this treatment is necessary and if every case warranted and needed all of this treatment. Also is all this treatment going to be effective or will it just overtax the body and mind? Is anyone looking at the big picture? Can we try to predict if someone will get lymphedema before we rush to do surgery?
With radiation there is skin damage. Treatment causes muscles to atrophy. Do we make all women wear a protective sleeve on an airplane? Do we let patients know that when we take breast tissue away that there will be no sensation left in the breast? Do we tell ahead of all the pain from surgery?
There is pain from surgery. There is collateral damage from all treatment. There’s numbness, muscle atrophy, skin changes, and heart disease. With all of this systematic therapy all things have side effects. The fatigue and chemobrain lasts for years. There’s heart disease from chemotherapy. Anthracyclines can cause leukemia. These things have lasting side effects. Fertility problems, joint problems, fractures and second cancers…all of these things are real. Treatment is not a free lunch.
When someone is triple negative at the beginning they can do well, but statistics show that triple negative breast cancer tends to recur early on. Other cancers tend to recur later while the patients are far away from all of this intense treatment. This is where prevention makes the most sense. If we can prevent the problem in the first place and knew what the real bugs in the breast were at the beginning wouldn’t we be better off? If we understood the environment before the problems took place and we had a vaccine to prevent these problems and we really understood how to keep a normal breast before we rush to all this treatment, wouldn’t that be a better approach? If we really looked at immunology, anatomy, physiology and found new clues and new ways to study DCIS before we rushed to throw everything in the kitchen sink on it, would we need surgery for DCIS? Could 3D ultrasound help with DCIS?
Instead of continuing to follow the things as they are, we at least owe it to ourselves to be asking these questions. Instead of rushing to treatment with DCIS would it be better to see carefully what was happening before we put a patient through these treatments that have collateral damage and side effects? Tamoxifen has a lot of side effects as well as AI’s.
At least by asking these questions and trying to prevent the problem with a vaccine we would be looking at everything we are doing and starting to come up with new ways of approaching the problem instead of just following the status quo of what we are doing. We need to do this so that we can avoid all of this collateral damage and also have these treatments available in case things progressed before someone has been so over treated that when they present with advanced disease all of this has been used and is no longer effective.
I also asked her whether by working on a vaccine to prevent breast cancer could we also apply using this for metastatic disease by injecting someone with a vaccine and being able to turn their disease around? She very carefully admitted that this was not her expertise and that she had just finished treatments, but she did feel that there was nothing to prevent us from trying to make a vaccine that also tackled metastatic breast cancer. Whether or not this is feasible I do not know, but what I did appreciate was hearing her perspective after going through as much as she has been through, and I am so glad that she is part of the team of trying to find answers and look at new ways that we approach this terrible disease.
It’s so great to have her back with all of us, after her treatments. She is truly someone who I admire and knows so much about breast cancer and it’s amazing to see her post treatment with so much enthusiasm for getting back to work on all of these important issues revolved around breast cancer.
Dr. Susan Love, MD, MBA, FACS is a Clinical Professor of Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and the President of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation. She leads the Love/Avon Army of Women, an initiative partnering of women (and men) who are willing to participate in breast cancer research with scientists who are conducting research on the prevention of breast cancer. She is the author of “Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book,” which is in it’s 5th edition. Dr. Love is a founding member of NBCC and her foundation is represented on the Board of Directors of NBCC. She received her medical degree from SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York and did her surgical training at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital.
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After realizing that some people are not aware of the Oncotype DX test or the Mammaprint test, I went to their websites and here is the current information about the tests. Of course, always discuss this with your oncologist as this is only here to help those that don’t know the latest information about these tests that is available online.
According to the Oncotype DX website:
The Oncotype DX® test is a diagnostic test that helps identify which women with early-stage, estrogen-receptor positive and lymph-node-negative breast cancer are more likely to benefit from adding chemotherapy to their hormonal treatment. This test also helps assess the likelihood that an individual woman’s breast cancer will return. The Oncotype DX test provides important information that you and your doctor may use when making decisions about treatment. Post-menopausal women recently diagnosed with node-positive, hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer may also be appropriate candidates for the Oncotype DX test.
According to the MammaPrint website:
To be eligible for the MammaPrint gene expression profile, a breast cancer patient should fulfill the following criteria:
For starters I was on a flight for a happy family event. The day started great. I got a lot of work done on our official Advocates for Breast Cancer website. I got to the airport at the right time even though LAX was so crowded because there’s a problem with the TSA and there’s long lines and less TSA agents to help move the lines faster.
I was a little mad at myself because I was lazy and went through the machine that I have been told by a radiation oncologist (whom I have great respect for) I should probably skip and not expose myself to the radiation. It just seemed faster. I started in an airport lounge with my computer figuring I’d work a little more on my Breast Cancer News at: http://www.scoop.it/t/breast-cancer-news and my Breast Cancer Advocacy stories at: http://www.scoop.it/t/breast-cancer-advocay. Sounds simple enough.
I searched the internet for abstracts and news stories about breast cancer and found what I hoped would make a difference with advocacy for breast cancer (and other cancers). I even discovered I spelled advocacy wrong today. Certainly I’m human and can make a spelling mistake. I sent out all of my good wishes to my fearless friends and organizations on Twitter trying to make pretty graphics while I sent energy to all of these incredible people who I have met either personally or through social media. So it seemed like it was time to get ready to enjoy a special family weekend.
I plugged my computer in and I saw a note from AnneMarie to look at Jody’s blog. I already suspected it’s bad news. Jody Schroger is one of our great moderators every Monday night at 6pm PST for #BCSM (breast cancer social media). It’s very bad. After years of NED (no evidence of disease), Jody has joined the 30% of breast cancer thrivers that has metastatic breast cancer (MBC).
And Jody. Why? She is a fantastic person who runs our #bcsm (breast cancer social media community) meetings with Alicia Stales and Dr. Deanna Attai. Why her? Welcome to the world of breast cancer. It’s all bad luck. Whoever gets Stage IV it has nothing to do with them not taking care of themselves or what stage they started with the disease.
I keep thinking everyone knows that I have talked about the statistic that about 30% of early stage breast cancer patients will go on to become metastatic. That’s Stage IV. Early stage breast cancer is what I had when I did chemo, radiation, and had a recurrence a year and half later. Stage IV means that the breast cancer has managed to travel from the breast to other body parts. With breast cancer it’s usually the bones, brains, liver, or lungs. Stage IV is a chronic disease. It is not curable, but can be contained. It depends on many factors how long it can be “contained”. Usually certain pathologies help because there are more targeted therapies that can work on keeping the cancer at bay. For those that don’t understand Stage IV breast cancer is breast cancer that has traveled to another body part. Let’s say it goes to the bones. It’s not bone cancer but still breast cancer that has metastasized to another body part.
I am angry. This disease is like dominoes. This disease is so cruel. I watch as friends that I care about get the bad news. The reason I did the chemo-hoping no bad cells could hide from all the nasty toxic chemo that I did because my breast cancer made it in to my lymph nodes giving it a chance to enter my blood stream. We never know if some cells hid out and they are just waiting to say- GOT YA.
OK here’s the Stage IV lesson. They have drug regimens that patients go through that can keep the cancer at bay for some time and then the cancer finds a way to outsmart the therapy. So the MBC patient moves on to the next drug. The trick is to try to find regimens with quality of life for as long as you can until the cancer outsmarts the drug. Then it’s time for nerve-racking scans to see if the drug is working. If the medications are working it’s great. The patient stays the course. Eventually though comes the scan that shows the cancer is growing and trying to get to more body parts. Many MBC patients can live a very long time especially with certain pathologies that lend itself to drug therapies that can help contain the disease. Today’s MBC patient can even have a chance of seeing NED (no evidence of disease). But the cancer still comes back and outsmarts the treatment. I respect everyone who has metastatic disease because they have to live knowing they are on a slope that eventually their disease will no longer respond to the drugs we have available today.
At the same time I want to be clear that today’s MBC patient is quite alive and can have a long quality of life.
At the beginning when diagnosed there is so much shock to the body and mind. I have watched my best friend Li Bailey go through the process quicker than others because unfortunately (bad luck) she had a pathology that today we have less medications to fight it with.
This is just not fair.
So why am I so frustrated? I am running a non-profit that aligns itself with breast cancer organizations that are working to help breast cancer patients. After learning that Komen’s junk campaigns were based on lies like telling women if they got mammograms they had a 98% chance of beating breast cancer. This is so not true. Komen also raised the most money of any breast cancer organizations. There was a great article in the New York Times, written by journalist Peggey Orestein that I scooped today called “Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer,” I published the article in my last blog. Meanwhile Katherine O’Brien of the Secretary of the MBCN (Metastatic Breast Cancer Network) wrote a great summary, overview and response to the article called Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer: MBCN Responds. In her response to Komen’s use of funds towards metastatic research, she writes, “ According to a Fortune magazine analysis, only an estimated .5 percent of all National Cancer Institute grants since 1972 focus on metastasis; out of more than $2.2 billion dollars raised over the last six years, Komen has dedicated $79 million to such research — a lot of money, to be sure, but a mere 3.6 percent of its total budget during that period.”
There has been a a lot of backlash against Komen and as some of you understand the overselling of pink culture I don’t have to explain the issue. I hope that you had time to read these articles. They are so well written.
I think there is another problem with Komen. I think the biggest backlash against them is that they became arrogant. People called them out for having pink parades that did not include the metastatic community because they didn’t want sick people marching in their parades, since it didn’t give you that warm fuzzy feeling of survivors raising their pink pom poms because they survived the disease. Komen thumbed their nose at the metastatic community.
I have to fight for the mets community. I can’t help it. People are dying around me. I don’t like that. People are doing all sorts of difficult medical regimens to stay alive. I have to open my big mouth and do all I can.
I promise you I won’t stop until MBC is a disease that can be reversed or people can live with Quality of life. I will continue to see that we don’t continue having corporations making known toxins that cause breast cancer.
One positive thing that happened is when the #BCSM Community group met we all rallied around Jody. Ironically I was flying back from the weekend on Monday night and joined the meeting on a flight that had wifi. At first I was confused if the timing would work. Then I realized as long as I started the meeting at the right time, the hour would be the same no matter if I flew in to a different time zone. So many of us were frustrated, angry and wanted Jody to know we have her back. This community means so much to me and I am grateful that at least we can come together during the good and bad times.
I have a lot more to say about all of this. For now I am going to publish this first part and continue talking about some other things that have added to my frustration. Stay tuned.
Last night , Donna Peach danced in to the light. It is her beautifully poetic expression for those that have died. Yesterday was Donna’s time. Every night I check my email and look for Donna Peach’s blog. She had stage IV metastatic breast cancer and I met her through her blog when I started blogging around ten months ago. Donna was a choreographer and a dancer and because of all my ballet and modern dance training, we became social media #fearless friends immediately. Her incredibly wonderful husband Marvin aka Don also would write on her blog to let us know how she was when she couldn’t.
Last night I was visiting my sister for a holiday and it’s the first night I did not check Donna’s blog. Of course Marvin was there to tell us what happened and to those who are interested in Donna’s blog please click here: at her site: http://donnapeach.com/. Unfortunately she was in the hospital and although she had been in and out of the hospital during these past 10 months, I had hoped she would get better and be able to go home with her incredible husband.
This is the part of breast cancer that I hate. When someone is diagnosed with Stage IV, their disease is not curable but there are various regimens of chemotherapy that can extend life. This is so unfair. The trick is trying to keep quality of life while extending it with regimens that have terrible side effects but are able to extend one’s lifetime.
My focus today is about the beautiful living Donna who participated in so many events with breast cancer social media including her web site and a site where others with cancer can express themselves through poetry and words. To see this great site go to: http://cancerpoet.com/. She always joined our meetings on Twitter with #BCSM (the breast cancer social media community) and I was always so happy to see that she was part of this incredible group.
I was supposed to meet her when the Los Angeles group of the #BCSM community met on a Saturday in West Hollywood, but unfortunately my dog Shelby had a terrible urinary tract infection and her urine was bloody. Leave it to Donna when I wrote her a long email explaining how sorry I was I missed the meeting, she just said not to worry I would see her the next meeting. Although deep down I knew time was getting limited, we all have to live in the moment and make the best of it.
I am frustrated that we have not found a way to help those with metastatic cancer. I have watched too many dance in to the light this way. But for today I just want to remember Donna and the beautiful soul that she was.
I know that sometimes this blog is hard for some. Who wants to hear about death and breast cancer? Yet this is a harsh reality of the disease. When I was first diagnosed I didn’t want to hear about anyone dying from the disease. All we want to hear is that we can be cured and we do what the doctors tell us and that’s the end of it.
Unfortunately when someone is diagnosed with metastatic cancer whether breast, esophageal, lung, pancreatic, colon, etc., many people don’t understand that no matter how much someone tries to grin and bear treatment there is no hope of a cure. There is only a chance of extending life through various chemo regimens depending upon one’s pathology.
I am not trying to be grim. I just want everyone to understand how special Donna was as well as so many I have watched with metastatic cancer that tried as hard as they could to stay with us as long as they could. I hope that through my advocacy this will change. I hope we can find a vaccine to end breast cancer while we learn how to reverse metastatic cancer. Only then will I believe that all of my time and energy was worth it – for truly this is a goal worth achieving.
Meanwhile, dear sweet Donna I hope your beautiful soul is at peace and you can feel all the love that so many of us are sending you.
I am so touched by Valerie Harper. As I am sure my readers are aware , not only is Valerie an incredibly accomplished actress, but her warmth and grace has been so touching during this terrible diagnosis of leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition that happens when cancer cells invade into the fluid-filled membrane that surrounds the brain. She has been told by her doctors she will likely be able to survive about three months.
I had the good fortune to meet Valerie at a hair salon that I used to go to. She was always down to earth and always friendly while at the salon to others. When I thought her appointment was ahead of mine she told me it was not and that I was to take my turn.
She has bravely gone on television, visiting The Today Show, The Doctors, The Talk, Good Morning America , and spoken with People Magazine. Each interview had her glowing with life accepting her diagnosis when you know she is in shock. It is so wonderful to see such a loving relationship with her husband.
She is also a lung cancer survivor. She never smoked. So many lung cancer survivor’s never smoked or quit a very long time before their diagnosis. I think that lung cancer is the cruelest of all cancers because so many people assume it’s only from smoking and I know many people who have had or are living with lung cancer and they are all non smokers. It’s a disease that deserves no blame. There is a campaign around lung cancer where we attach the words, “no stigma”. Meanwhile Valerie caught the lung cancer early and survived it.
Now she faces such a difficult diagnosis. We see her looking healthy and beautiful and as so many with metastatic cancer do. People are surprised because they not look as though they are very ill especially at the beginning of their diagnosis. Different cancers at different metastatic stages are like that and each one has a different set of statistics for how much time a patient has a chance of living. With my close friend Li when she was metastatic we often talked about living through the dying and making the most of the time we have. Like Valerie we wanted quality of life, not quantity.
There is a wonderful article by Donna Kaufman in I Village that talks about the 10 most inspiring things we’ve learned from Valerie Harper that I am going to copy and paste here. Valerie’s courage and willingness to share this private part of her life with all of us teaching us so much is just beautiful.
1. Don’t blame yourself for tragedy. “If you die, you’re not a failure,” Harper said on Today. ‘You’re just somebody who had cancer. And that’s the outcome.”
2. Live in this moment, right now. “I’m not dying until I do,” Harper told Today. “I have an intention to live each moment fully.”
3. Remember that death is part of life. “I really want Americans, all of us, to be less afraid of death,” Harper said on The Doctors. “Know that it’s a passage, but don’t go to the funeral before the funeral. While you’re living, live.”
4. Let yourself be sad — but stay hopeful. “I don’t mean this to be Pollyanna! I allow myself the grief,” Harper told Today‘s Savannah Guthrie, when asked if she ever felt sad. “What I’m saying is keep your consciousness, your thoughts open to infinite possibility and keep yourself open to miracles.”
5. Don’t give in to despair when there’s more pasta to eat. When Harper first heard her diagnosis, she said on The Doctors, “I broke down. I absolutely sobbed. I let myself do it. Then I said, ‘Okay, you’ve been the drama queen. Now get over it and make the pasta.'”
6. Deal with your battles in the way that makes sense to you. When one of the Doctors asked Harper why she was spending her final days on a press tour, she responded, “Dr. Travis, this is not for everyone. This is my way of dealing with it.”
7. Don’t live in denial. “I’m trouble,” Harper admitted in a video message for People, “but when the smoke clears, I’ll be standing. Until I’m not. And I’m ready for that, too.”
8. Don’t forget to live just because you’re dying. “‘Incurable’ is a tough word. A lot of people were calling — ‘Can I come by the house?’ ‘Are you in a wheel chair?’ — because they hear it as this death sentence,” Harper said on Today. “Which it may be. But I’m not dying until I do. I promise I won’t.”
9. Never be afraid of what’s next. “I don’t know what’s ahead, but I’m ready for it. Onward!” Harper told fans in her People message. “I love you. And know that I’m okay. I am okay on this venture.”
10. Keep your loved ones close. Harper says she’ll be spending her last months with her husband and daughter while she undergoes treatments to try to slow the progress of her disease. “My doctor said it’s incurable — so far,” Harper said on GMA. “And I love that possibility. We all need to live in infinite possibility.”
Valerie speaks of how important it is not to blames oneself for a cancer diagnosis. She talks about living in the moment and not focusing on the dying. She says to deal with your battles in your way. For her it was going on Television and speaking to her fans. Most important she speaks of keeping family close. Even though she knows that her disease is “incurable”, she still lives in a world of “infinite possibility.”
Her message is one of so much hope for so many that have faced incredible obstacles in their lives. I just love everything about Valerie!
In the blog, “Journeying beyond Breast Cancer” Marie challenged other bloggers to celebrate the ordinary by taking a photo of something every day that makes them feel grateful. When my friend Li Bailey died on January 6, 2012 of Metastatic Breast Cancer (see earlier blog My Fearless Friend Li Bailey) , she left me with a gift that she asked me to take care of when she found out she was going to die from Breast Cancer. It was her beautiful dog Shelby. Li knew that I adored Shelby from the first day she arrived at her home.
When Li got Shelby, Li had completed her primary chemo and moved to a bigger apartment so she could have a puppy. Shelby arrived around Christmas in 2005 and when I visited Li, I loved playing with Shelby and she is just the sweetest dog that anyone could ever ask for. Shelby brought so much joy in to Li’s life and continues to bring me joy every day.
The day Li died, I took Shelby and all of her things to my home. We spent the day together as she got used to her new home. Shelby acted as though this was a new fun adventure. I am so grateful to have her in my life and she continues to keep my friend alive in my mind by just being herself. I love Shelby so much! She is a fun, happy, adorable dog with the most beautiful eyes.
Earlier today I was feeling sad because I missed my friend. I walked with Shelby like I do everyday and when we got home I felt so much better. She was sitting on the floor looking so pretty that I took her picture and realized just how grateful I am for having had Li in my life and having been blessed with her incredible gift of Shelby.
I also want to thank Marie for giving all of us bloggers a great idea to post about.
It was so thrilling to attend #ESCAPE2016. How wonderful the BAG IT organization is committed to combining patient advocacy with self discovery. meditation, group exercises, meetings about effective lobbying, running non-profits and even a special Indian dance. 
I went to Escape seeking solutions to balance my personal and professional passions. I discovered I hide my ongoing complications from this disease, because so many of my close friends with stage IV are being ignored and facing much more difficult circumstances. I want to save everyone from the scars of cancer. I have lost so many family members and loved ones to this disease.
The desert was beautiful, but a little warm this time of year. With a no cell phone policy at Miravel Resort, it was nice to not feel so absorbed by the 100’s of tweets, FB posts, texts, and emails, as I tried to balance the great conferences with classes and even group meditations in pods!
I loved that it was a small mix of all kinds of cancer advocates. There was healthy food, meditation, and networking. We had an amazing talk from Shelley at the NCCS where she talked about how we influence policy. 
I hope to go again next year. I was fortunate to meet some great people and partake in combining advocacy with self discovery. Patient advocates (especially volunteers) need this type of balance. The burn out factor is real especially when passions are high, time is of the essence to save lives and yet all of us must remember to stop, take a breath, and try to be in the moment especially when the body and mind are filled with stress.
It’s also important to put our personal health first. No matter what stage or complications one has from any cancer, loved ones helping, medical professionals, patient advocates, researchers, and doctors, we are all in this together. We must respect each other and try to move forward. My own personal side effects have slowed me down sometimes, but it’s time we allow ourselves to feel.
I also realized that I have been dealing with a lot of grief. Thankfully I was surrounded by awesome people. 
During many of the special meditative and group activities, I found myself quite emotional. I do believe that when it comes to cancer there’s so much emotional pain, physical changes, highs and lows, and some very tough times because of the incredible toll this disease can take. Thank you to the sponsors who help bring Escape2016 to patient advocates.
I came home so much more refreshed and ready for the tasks ahead that keep this new balance. It’s important to take time for reflection and always be mindful of making sure we keep taking care of our selves, while content to push forward helping others.
A highly accurate blood test, which fishes the blood of breast cancer patients for circulating tumor DNA fragments, appears to predict who will relapse, according to a new prospective study in Science Translational Medicine.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.dddmag.com
Promising early studies trying to predict risk of breast cancer relapse. To see the original reports related to this article go to: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/302/302ra133 and http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1213261
This is a very special post by Tami Boehmer. I am reblogging it here, but I will also add the original link:
http://www.tamiboehmer.com/2015/07/no-expiration-date-a-tribute-to-our-angel-krysti-hughett/
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Last night, I lay in bed and couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know that my dear friend, Krysti Hughett, drew her last breath just an hour before. Maybe my body and soul could sense it. Krysti passed away on July 7, after more than 10 years of beating the odds of very aggressive stage IV inflammatory breast cancer. She accomplished such an overwhelming task with her determination, incredible intelligence, and tender love and support she gave to others. Yet I can feel her presence as if she was still here. And in a way she is.
It is no coincidence I met Krysti while she was helping others. It was about six years ago, and Krysti was leading a Young Survival Coalition (YSC) support conference call for stage IV breast cancer survivors. I was fairly new at the game and nervous about reaching out for help. It was then that Krysti earned the moniker I gave her – “resource queen.” She told me about a magical place called Camp Kesem and suggested my daughter would like to attend. Her own daughter Molly had been going and loved it. I signed Chrissy up for that summer and she and Molly (AKA camp name Mo Mo) became cabin mates and fast friends. We’d meet up with Krysti and her husband Bill at camp and have dinner afterward. It became our tradition.
Krysti was my mentor and friend. She let me in on so many cancer perks I’d otherwise would have not known about. In addition to Camp Kesem, there was a wonderful mountain retreat weekend through an organization called Image Reborn. You better believe I took advantage of that and passed it along to my breast cancer friends.
Krysti was also my inspiration and fountain of information for clinical trials. Krysti, I found, knew more about them than many of my doctors. It extended her life and many others she so freely advised. I once told her she should get paid for the hours upon hours of consulting she provided for so many people. She shot me down of course. Krysti gave with love; money had nothing to do with it.
Every year we met at Camp Kesem, Krysti would joyously announce that she made it another year to see Molly go to camp. She loved that place, and she loved her girls – Molly, Mindy and Megan. We had a special relationship, but I knew I shared her with so many people who also had a special relationship with this remarkable lady. As she said in her final note, she was loved.
Last Thursday, I went up to Indianapolis with my friend Joules Evans for my scan and blood work for my upcoming clinical trial. Afterwards we stopped in and visited Krysti who was at a nearby hospital. We were among many people who gathered at her bedside. Krysti was struggling to breathe but took off her oxygen mask so she could talk to me. I instinctively stroked her head as she labored to speak. I asked if I was bothering her but she assured me it felt very good. I wanted to give back some of that love and caring she so generously shared with me. We reminisced how we met, and she wanted to know about my clinical trial. Her mind was still sharp as ever and she let me know it sounded promising. I told her I loved her very much and she said she loved me.
There seemed to be little left to be said, but as I turned to head out the door, she had one thing to say to me. “Please let everyone know how you’re doing on your trial.” She wanted me to keep in touch with her family and friends. And I suspect, that she will be listening from above as I give my updates. I know on some deep level that Krysti is watching over me and everyone she has loved. She is just next door, in another dimension, but is still helping everyone. I can feel that right now as I write this.
Krysti’s legacy lives on, and I’m grateful to play a small role in that. Her story is one of the many featured in my book, Miracle Survivors: Beating the Odds of Incurable Cancer. I know Krysti would want you to read it because her story is so encouraging, just like she was in her life.
I’ll leave you with a Krysti quote from my book: “At one point, I was NED (No Evidence of Disease). I call it No Expiration Date. When my husband got me a handicapped sticker – which I needed because I had a brain tumor at the time – it said no expiration. That’s what I focus on whenever I’m in my car. I want to stamp that on my forehead.”
I know one thing for sure, there is no expiration for the memories and
legacy Krysti leaves behind. Your body may have expired; but your spirit will forever be with us.
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Tami is an amazing person whose story and phenomenal books are incredibly inspirational. After her five-year, cancer-free anniversary she had a metastatic recurrence of breast cancer in 2008. Tami was shocked when One doctor told her, “You could live two years or 20 years, but you’ll die from breast cancer.”
Tami explains, “I wanted talk with other cancer survivors who didn’t accept doctors’ predictions–people who beat the odds. I was determined to find out how they did it so I could do it myself. So I started searching for “miracle survivors” nationwide for my book, From Incurable to Incredible: Cancer Survivors Who Beat the Odds.”
Her new book called Miracle Survivors: Beating the Odds of Incurable Cancer, was released in November 2014 .You will find all new stories, but Tami again says “it’s the same message: there is hope no matter what the circumstances.
I feel as if I’m fulfilling God’s purpose for me through this work. It has taught me cancer doesn’t have to be a death sentence. Like the people I’ve interviewed, cancer for me was the beginning of a new way of life; one of appreciation, hope, and discovering one’s potential.”
Please learn more about Tami and visit her blog at: http://www.tamiboehmer.com
This is from Time Magazine by David Chan. He answers life lessons from cancer patients.
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