Executive Director's Blog

As we usher in 2011, we at SHARE are committing ourselves to another year of providing breast and ovarian cancer survivors with life-saving information and support. And we're dedicated to working in a smarter way to give you what you want and need.
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We have all lost another woman from metastatic breast cancer. In this case it's a well-known woman whose breast cancer journey was made public and whose access to quality care was a given. And yet Elizabeth Edwards died of breast cancer six years after her initial diagnosis and three years after the disease spread to other parts of her body. We all know that access to quality care can make a difference; that sometimes if the disease is detected in an early stage, that might make a difference; that often we don't really know what makes the difference...why some women can live with metastatic disease for a long time and others cannot. What we do know is that this has to stop.
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On Sunday, I went to a memorial service at the SHARE Queens support group to remember and honor one of its members, Susie Samuels, who died of metastatic breast cancer. The day before, I had coincidentally watched the first five episodes of "The Big C," which features a character played by Laura Linney who has been diagnosed with advanced melanoma. I was struck by the depiction of a support group she attends, where the facilitator tries to engage her by saying, "Cancer is a gift."
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As health care advocates, we have been taught to always ask whether a particular treatment is supported by the evidence and if yes, what that evidence looks like. Yet many of us in practice -- me, for one -- don't always do so.
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The President's Cancer Panel released a report today. Read it and give us your thoughts, experiences and comments.
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During the last month, since the new screening guidelines were announced, it seems everyone wants to talk about them.
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Most of us at SHARE are breast or ovarian cancer survivors. Some of us with breast cancer were diagnosed as a result of a suspicious finding on a yearly screening mammogram when we had no symptoms. Others of us, like me at age 48 and then at 66, were diagnosed even though nothing showed on those yearly mammograms.
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I've often thought about why some people are donors and others are not. My sense, after years of being involved in the not for profit world, is that it's less about someone's financial situation than it is about how they see themselves and the world. 
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When a program sign-up of 30 women results in an attendance of 30 women, you realize that something really special must be happening. So it was when 30 SHARE ovarian cancer survivors, some as long term as 38 years and others as recent as February 2009, gathered at SHARE to meet each other.
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Lately I've been thinking about whether in-person support groups are still relevant for women and men affected by breast or ovarian cancer.
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