1C
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2017
CONTACT US
Erick Bengel | Features Editor
ebengel@dailyastorian.com
WEEKEND
BREAK
FOLLOW US
facebook.com/
DailyAstorian
There’s much more
at stake than being aware
ber of people at any given time in the U.S.
living with metastatic breast cancer. Right
now it’s 155,000.
In 2014, MBCA (the Metastatic Breast
Cancer Alliance) concluded through its
research that a mere 2 to 5 percent of all
funding raised for breast cancer research
addresses anything about MBC. What? Met-
astatic disease is what kills people.
Much of the research focuses on prevent-
ing metastatic recurrence. That’s great, but
what about those estimated 155,000, and the
enormously high number that must mean for
the rest of the world? Sure, we can try to pre-
vent breast cancer by living healthy and so
on, but the simple fact is that there is no sci-
entifi cally known preventative strategy.
In addition, there is no way to prevent
metastasis when we do not give the scien-
tifi c community the dollars even to fi gure out
what causes metastasis to occur.
Three years
with metastatic
breast cancer:
My annual report
By LAURA SNYDER
For EO Media Group
‘S
o it was that for two minutes we sang
with all our hearts, feeling only for
the past and turning our gaze from
the future, swimmers doing the backstroke
toward a waterfall.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, “The Sympathizer”
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said,
“The good thing about science is that it’s true
whether or not you believe in it.”
You know, like the scientifi c fact that the
climate is changing, or the fact that a frac-
tion of the dollars (estimates are 5 to 7 per-
cent) for cancer research addresses meta-
static cancer.
Yes, there have been game-changers in
the metastatic cancer area, especially for
those with the HER2 positive subtype of
breast cancer, some leukemias and some
lung cancers.
But many friends and I are living on bor-
rowed time. The refusal of some people,
including in our government, to acknowl-
edge science is personal to me and my fam-
ily, as I have metastatic (stage IV) breast can-
cer (MBC).
The short version: After a stage III breast
cancer diagnosis in 2012 came a shocking
metastatic diagnosis in 2014. The cancer had
found its way into other parts of my body.
Three and a half years later, thanks to sci-
ence, I’m here, past my three-year median
survival expiration date.
I’m so grateful for my life: running;
swimming; writing; practicing yoga; spend-
ing time with loved ones; eating the bounty
of my chosen home (salmon, crab and oys-
ters, blackberries and homegrown strawber-
ries). It’s all much better than the alternative,
right?
What does this mean for me personally?
Starting in 2012, I have been on six differ-
ent chemotherapies and targeted treatments,
and/or radiation for all but nine months
through 2013 and 2014. I will never, as long
as I manage to live, be off treatment.
But if I really dig, what does it mean?
Still a public health crisis
Submitted Photo
Laura Snyder
Awareness is not enough
Submitted Photo
It means I’m exhausted, all day, every
day. And that is with the “easy” chemo I’m
on now. For now, I do not have excruciat-
ingly painful peeling feet and hands, nausea
or vomiting, just to name a handful of side
effects I’ve experienced on other treatments.
I do have blurred vision, dry eyes (this can
actually be torturous), dizziness and the
occasional bout with vertigo.
This is not the exhaustion of a brutally
hard work day. The exhaustion I have is far
beyond any “tired” I’ve experienced in my
life. Cancer treatment fatigue is its own cruel
type.
So we arrive at another October, Breast
Cancer Awareness Month.
Not much has changed in the 30 years
since the introduction of the pink rib-
bon. And I, for one, am never glad to wit-
ness another month of a world turned pink
to bring “awareness” to an awful disease of
which we are already so very much aware.
Awareness is not going to cure me, or
turn my terminal disease into a chronic and
livable disease. Awareness will not cure my
large community of those with MBC. What
may possibly net us a cure, or turn stage IV
breast cancer into a chronic and livable dis-
ease? A race? A pink milk carton, sweatband
or (for real) a gun?
The answer is science.
After decades of pink fundraising, 40,000
people per year in the U.S. alone still die of
metastatic breast cancer. Worldwide the
death toll is more than half a million per
year. Estimates range from 20 to 36 percent
of early-stage breast cancers metastasizing.
We have only a rough estimate of the num-
Yes, you’ve heard this from me before.
Yes, with luck (mine), you’ll hear it again.
I guess I believe the dire and fatal breast
cancer situation needs to change, quickly,
using every resource that can be mustered.
This does not mean wearing a pink sweat-
band while you work out, or eating chicken
from a pink bucket of KFC. I’m one of the
hundreds of thousands swimming the back-
stroke toward a waterfall while, accord-
ing to Karuna Jaggar (executive director of
Breast Cancer Action, whose mission is “to
achieve health justice for all at risk of and
living with breast cancer”), breast cancer
remains a public health crisis and a social
justice issue.
Please be certain the dollars you give are
not for stuff that will end up at a landfi ll or
the Goodwill but for research. Some excel-
lent organizations are Metavivor, the Met-
astatic Breast Cancer Network and Breast
Cancer Action. Check out all organizations
on Charity Navigator. You might be sur-
prised by what you learn about behemoths
like Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and just
how much — or, rather, how little — of their
massive fundraising is actually dedicated to
fi nding a cure.
This year I’ve outlived the median sur-
vival time of about three years for metastatic
breast cancer. I’m one of the lucky ones.
Please remember this October what
Karuna Jaggar of Breast Cancer Action
said while pointing out that the NFL gives
no proceeds from pink products to research:
“You can’t shop your way out of the breast
cancer epidemic.”
‘YOU CAN’T SHOP YOUR WAY OUT OF THE BREAST CANCER EPIDEMIC.’
Karuna Jaggar | Breast Cancer Action executive director, pointing out that the NFL gives no proceeds from pink products to research