Thinking of Someone with MBC in the Hospital Now
My fingers stopped this morning for a while when I came upon a reference to @whymommy. Last thing I read about her condition, she was at home having a tough but cozy Thanksgiving at home. ...
Breast Cancer
Visiting the Scar Project Exhibit
On Friday I visited the Scar Project exhibit at Openhouse, on Mulberry Street just south of Spring. Photographer David Jay offers penetrating, large, wall-mounted images of young people with breast cancer. The photos reveal women ...
On Alcohol and Breast Cancer, Guilt, Correlations, Fun, Moderation, Doctors’ Habits, Advice and Herbal Tea
Few BC news items irk some women I know more than those linking alcohol consumption to the Disease. Joy-draining results like those reported this week serve up a double-whammy of guilt: first – that you might have developed cancer because you drank ...
Brief Report: Annual Meeting of the Metastatic Breast Cancer Network
The Metastatic Breast Cancer Network held its fifth annual meeting in Baltimore over this past weekend. Most of the nearly 300 registrants were women living with MBC. The lively group of women coalesced in the ...
Mammograms Could Save More Lives Than You Might Think
Some of the more understandable discussion comes from women with metastatic disease whose tumors were missed by screening mammography. Notably, neither paper quotes an oncologist.
More on DCIS
More, a magazine “for women of style & substance,” has an unusually thorough, now-available article by Nancy F. Smith in its September issue on A Breast Cancer You May Not Need to Treat. The article’s ...
A Life-Changing Day
Today marks 9 years, exactly, since Dr. L. gave me the Call. It was a Wednesday afternoon. I was in clinic, caring for patients with blood diseases. In between seeing my patients and supervising the ...
Glad to Spot a Pink Ribbon
This morning I walked into a Starbucks and noted a woman wearing a little pink ribbon on the lapel of her suit. She appeared to be in a meeting, speaking seriously with a small group ...
1 in 70 Women Develops Breast Cancer Before Reaching 50 Years
A post in yesterday’s Well column, about coverage of breast cancer by the media, focused on the first-person narrative of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Journalist Tara Parker-Pope writes: Her announcement has generated much discussion in the ...
Breast Cancer Avastin Update
This afternoon Ed Silverman of Pharmalot reports that Roche has proposed a compromise to the FDA over Avastin’s use in women with metastatic breast cancer. The drug would be approved for use only in combination ...
No Room For Emotion or Exceptions to the Rule (on Avastin)
My cousin testified before the FDA oncology advisory board on Tuesday about her experience taking Avastin. This is a tragedy, to deny the only drug that is keeping a 51 year old woman alive. You ...
FDA Approves New Assay for Her2 in Breast Cancer
This week the FDA approved a new assay for Her2 expression in breast cancer biopsies. The technology, Inform Dual ISH, is manufactured by Ventana Medical Systems, a Roche subsidiary. Inform Dual ISH works like this: ...
Considering Aromasin for Healthy Women, and the New Breast Cancer Prevention Study
I’m minding the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology from a distance this year. So far, the big breast cancer story syncs with a NEJM paper published yesterday on-line, on the use ...
Confusing Reports On Coffee and Cancer, and What To Do About Breakfast
When I was a medical resident in the late 1980s, we treated some patients with pancreatic cancer on a regimen nick-named the coffee protocol because it included infusions of intravenous caffeine. How absurd, we thought ...
Get Off My Case
In my inbox this morning, via ASCO‘s “Cancer in the News” feed: The UK’s Telegraph (5/6, Beckford) reported that as “many as 20,000 British women could avoid developing” breast cancer “each year, if they took ...
New York City Reports Long Delays for Mammograms
A recent audit of nine NYC’s Health and Hospitals Corporation found City Comptroller Liu described as dangerous delays in women’s health care. It takes too long for women to get screening and diagnostic mammograms. The ...
New Study, Presented at a Meeting of Breast Surgeons, Supports that Mammograms Save Lives of Women in Their 40s
The American Society of Breast Surgeons held its 2011 annual meeting in D.C. from April 27 – May 1. Among the papers presented was Abstract #1754: “Mammography in 40 Year Old Women: The Potential Impact ...
About the Premarin Study and Breast Cancer
This week a paper came out in JAMA showing a surprising reduction in breast cancer cases among women who had hysterectomies and then took Premarin, an estrogen-only remedy compounded from steroids in horses’ urine. The ...
On My Mind
Yesterday I checked in on the Cancer Culture Chronicles, a thoughtful and sometimes funny blog by Anna Rachnel, who lives with metastatic breast cancer. There I learned that the author of Living With Cancer, a ...
New Data for Avastin (Bevacizumab)
A new report was published on-line this afternoon by the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). It covers a Phase III (randomized) clinical trial of Avastin (Bevacizumab) in women with metastatic BC. Over 1200 patients were ...