Breast Cancer: A Survivor’s Perspective

BY GLADYS POLLACK

How You Can Support the Search for a Cure BY ALISON RAMSEY You can use money, time or spending power to support breast cancer research in Canada. You can donate to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (www.cbcf.org). You can also designate your donation to the Canadian Cancer Society (www.cancer.ca) or Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, which passes your donation along to its Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research.The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation’s alliances with some of Canada’s major retailers allows your shopping decisions to help fund breast cancer research – especially during October, and if you love the colour pink. —Throughout October, Cineplex Odeon, Famous Players and Galaxy Cinemas will donate a portion of ticket sales; proceeds from sales of a special pin and concession combo also benefit the Foundation. If you make an online donation of $5 or more through Cineplex (www.cineplex.com, click on Spotlight the Cure), movie screens across Canada will showcase your name in November. —The Toronto Maple Leafs’ third Pink Ribbon Night on Oct. 14 kicks off an online auction that ends on the 28 th. —Thirty to 40 “Think Pink” items on sale at The Bay, Zellers and Home Outfitters during October benefit the Foundation, including $30 from each sale of The Bay’s pink-stripe, wool blanket. —For every Source brand Yoplait product you buy until Oct. 15, a dime goes to breast cancer research. If the shopping bug doesn’t happen to hit in October, don’t worry. Several stores and manufacturers run year-round campaigns where a portion of the sale price or all proceeds go to the Foundation. —The Bay sells three pink appliances: Each Kitchen Aid Limited Edition mixer translates into a $100 donation. You can use those appliances to make recipes from these fundraising cookbooks: Better Homes and Garden Pink Plaid Cookbook;Secrets for Permanent Weight Loss by Rose Reisman; and In Great Taste: Fresh, Simple Recipes for Eating and Living Well by Evelyn H. Lauder, which funds U.S. breast cancer research. —The Avon Foundation’s fundraiser this year is a Flame notepad/compact, a handy stocking stuffer available now and through March 28. —At the grocery store, pick up Lean Cuisine with a pink ribbon on the box, SoGood soy beverages, Simple Pleasures cookies, or specially marked M&Ms. —At the mall, look for pink WonderBras, cat’s eye Artistic Jewelry as well as Havaianas Pink Ribbon flip-flops.Limited-edition cell phone charms are available at Payless Shoe Source and Sears.Sears also contributes through sales of its Hope teddy bear and a zip-up sweater. You can also contribute by picking up a FinePix Z3 digital camera at Shoppers Drug Mart. —Athletic women can check out New Balance Pink Ribbon Footwear and The Running Room’s Pink Ribbon athletic wear. FisherGirl donates 50% of sales of its Survival Rod Kit or Rod/Reel Combo, K2’s T-Nine inline skates and snowboards, and Wilson’s Hope pink and purple golf balls. Choose Romantic Rose cheques from Davis + Henderson through your bank branch and keep your place with a pink ribbon bookmark from Shoppers Drug Mart. You can do all kinds of home repairs with 3M’s pink duct tape, or stock up on pink Post-It notes or Scotch Brights scouring pads. If you wish to make a visible, physical contribution, consider joining the annual Run for the Cure, a fall event that raised over $25 million this year—and over $100 million since its inception. Or you can participate in National Denim Day by organizing a denim-wearing fundraiser at your office the Tuesday following Mother’s Day. Party lovers can arrange a “KitchenAid For the Cure” party, where guests are asked to bring donations instead of hostess gifts, and KitchenAid kicks in an additional $50. For more details of how your shopping choices can contribute to breast cancer research, go to www.cbcf.org and click on “Shop for the Cure.” For information on Denim Day, go to http://www.breast.cancer.ca/what_can_i_do/.

“I know what you are feeling,” I say to Kathy, who has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. “People may say they understand, but unless they’ve gone through this themselves, they don’t really know the fear, the anguish that a diagnosis of cancer brings. I know. I’ve walked that path.”

Kathy, a close friend of my daughter’s, is seeking encouragement and hope. Cancer is a lonely journey with fearful stops along the way—destination unknown.

Anger (why me?), fear of the future (how often did I compose my own obituary?) and regret (for the things I hadn’t found time to do) raced through my head. Kathy nods in agreement as I go through this checklist of frenzied emotions that had beset me when I heard the dreaded words “breast cancer.”

“Kathy, you’re about to travel on a difficult road. But, please, keep in mind...There is life after cancer,” I tell her.

As I speak to Kathy, my thoughts return to that day in March more than a decade ago. I was getting ready for my husband’s birthday party...bathing, lathering soap over my body...and there it was…a lump in my breast. Somehow, I got through the party and the next day made an appointment for a mammogram. I’d had a mammogram just six months earlier and had been told all was fine. But this time, the mammogram was followed by an ultrasound, and before I could catch my breath, I was sitting in the oncologist’s office, scheduling surgery. Sure enough, the earlier mammogram showed the lump. I’d fallen through the cracks. I’d become part of the sisterhood of more than 20,000 Canadian women who are diagnosed with breast cancer each year…The one in nine women expected to develop breast cancer during her lifetime.

I wish I could say I was stoic and brave. I wasn’t. I was simply terrified, and I was angry. I never neglected a doctor’s appointment or the annual mammogram. Why should this have happened to me? I felt betrayed by my body. I suffered from panic attacks, lack of sleep and was thoroughly depressed.

As soon as I returned from hospital after my surgery, my brother, an endocrinologist based in New York, flew to Montreal. A respected medical practitioner and teacher, my brother said: “Get on with your life. Go back to work. Incorporate the treatment schedule into your daily routine. Don’t let cancer conquer you!” It was the best advice I could have received and it sustained me through the months of chemotherapy and radiation. I worked throughout my treatment, scheduling chemotherapy for Fridays (so I could recover over the weekend) and having radiation at the end of my work day. It all became part of my daily schedule, of my life. And life continued. The frequent check-ups with the oncologist, the mammograms, ultrasounds...these were the fearful pit stops that punctuated my life for several years following diagnosis.

In retrospect, my cancer experience has had some positive results. It taught me to value each day as a gift, to value the love and support of family and dear friends. And some time after my cancer diagnosis, my daughter confronted me with this: “Mom, I always thought I could never measure up to you. But when I saw you frightened and so vulnerable, I realized that you weren’t superwoman, and I felt better about myself.”

Many advances in breast cancer treatment have occurred in the years since I was diagnosed. Tamoxifen, once the hormonal medicine of choice for all women with hormone-receptor positive breast cancer is being replaced by aromatase inhibitors such as letrozole (Femara) in post-menopausal women with hormone-receptive positive breast cancer. Herceptin (chemical name trastuzumab) is offering hope to women with metastatic breast cancer. Groundbreaking work is being done to identify women with breast cancer susceptibility mutations such as BRCA1 or BRAC2.

Sentinel lymph node biopsy is sparing many breast cancer patients the removal of all the lymph nodes in the armpit to determine if cancer has spread. (Studies have indicated that if cancer has not affected the sentinel node, it is unlikely that it has spread to other areas.) MRI imaging is helping in the detection of cancer spread. Anti-angiogenesis compounds are being tested in patients with a variety of cancers. (tumours can’t survive without a blood supply—a process known as angiogenesis).

And the good news, according to the Canadian Cancer Society, is that since 1993 the incidence rates for breast cancer have stabilized, and death rates have declined steadily.

As for Kathy, just days after her surgery, she was out jogging, full of fighting spirit and determined to beat her cancer. Keep jogging, Kathy!