Time for a new treatment

Sorry I should have been clearer in my opening few sentences. What I meant (and I was trying to be nice and not get on my soapbox) was that there is enough awareness of Early Breast Cancer going on in the community thanks to the efforts of many brave women who have pushed this agenda over the past twenty years as well as Government programs such as Breast Screen and organisations such as BCNA, BCAG and BreCan, it's now time to shift the focus onto a cure for ALL of us. What starts BC in the first place? What triggers a return?

I agree with Amanda, the cancer continuum includes all breast cancer patients and those of us at Stage 4 should not have to become invisible to the rest of the breast cancer community because we represent their worst fears and can offend sensibilities. It is for that reason that I am out and about sharing my story and demonstrating that it is possible to LIVE with advanced disease. 

It's true that screening programs probably pick up cancers that would resolve themselves and not cause any problem, however no-one can tell which ones will resolve and which ones need treatment, once diagnosis has been made the treatment begins for all, hence a skew in the statisitics. There is no way we can find this out as it would be unethical to do a clinical trial with a life threatening disease and allocate some women to the treatment arm and some to the placebo arm.

The discovery that breast cancer sheds cells into the bloodstream in the very early stages of the disease explains why I sat through chemotherapy with one woman who had been staged at 0, eight years ago and another woman who had been staged at 1B five years ago. Both had had the cancer return. Current estimates of the recurrence rate vary from below 20% to 25% to above 30%. Early stats were based on the 5 year survival rate, they are now being extended to 10, 15 and 20 years in some studies. There has been an improvement in data collection, these stats should be more accurate in the future.

We need to get this message out, there are those whose cancer will return despite anything they do or don't do, there are no guarantees, we're all in this together and we need to stick together and work towards a cure, if not in time for ourselves then for our daughters.

My heart goes out to Amanda and others with young children who need a mother's guidance, not just for a few more years but forever.

Tried to stay off my soapbox

With love

Joy k