Mets Matters Blog

With the start of a New Year, as well as pivotal changes in SHARE'S leadership on the way, we - the staff - have been evaluating our programs, tightening our budgets, reshaping old goals and creating new ones. We are, in essence, making our professional resolutions for the New Year. Thinking about my own personal resolutions as well as the resolutions of  women living with metastatic breast cancer,  I began a thoroughly unscientific quest for information about the personal resolutions of those living with MBC as well as the origin of New Year Resolutions themselves.  Here's what I found out:
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Musa Mayer participated in the First International Consensus on Metastatic Breast Cancer, held in Lisbon, Portugal in fall 2011. Watch this video to learn why this meeting was so important.
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I was invited by Novartis Oncology, creator of Femara and other drugs to treat breast cancer, to participate on an advisory board with other patient advocates at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. . . .
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Several SHARE volunteers, support group participants and I attended the MBCN annual conference in Baltimore, MD last month.  The conference sponsored by MBCN and  Johns Hopkins and provided a full day of programming, much of it relating directly to metastatic breast cancer.  Many of the sessions presented will be available on line at the MBCN website:  Mbcnetwork.org later this month.  One break out session I attended is described below.  A few of our volunteers have had this type of treatment.  If you have any questions, feel free to call me or the hotline, and we will be happy to connect you with someone who has been there...
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Hearing the words "you have cancer" is devastating.  Hearing the words "your cancer has returned" or "your cancer has already spread",  is beyond imaginable to most.  It is what every woman initially diagnosed with breast cancer fears.  Once diagnosed with metastatic disease, you become part of a whole new group. A group that is often feared, ignored and marginalized.  Women living with metastatic disease are no longer considered Breast Cancer "Survivors" as their treatment will go on and on.  As a result, there is no "Pink" community of support behind them, little awareness of advanced disease, and fear.  Not only do you contend with your own fear of having metastatic cancer, but also the fear of your family, friends, neighbors and other women with breast cancer.  It's a lonely and scary place to be.   
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The TV show Supernanny is my secret addiction. I love seeing Supernanny Jo Frost sweep...
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The FDA has granted Genentech a hearing on its appeal of the agency's decision to remove accelerated approval of Avastin for first-line treatment of metastatic breast cancer.
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If you have breast cancer that has spread to your bones and are wondering whether you should switch from
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Here's a great blog by Amy Berman, a registered nurse who has been diagnosed with Stage 4 inflammatory breast cancer. She writes about...
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Living with metastatic breast cancer is "not a pink-ribbon life," as The New York Times wrote in an excellent article, "A Pink-Ribbon Race, Years Long."
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The FDA announced today that they are recommending that Avastin not be approved for women with metastatic breast cancer. I listened to a conference call they held to explain their decision and take questions from advocates. Here's a summary of what they said:
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It's October. And for women living with metastatic breast cancer, it's hard to get their voices heard over the onslaught of pink celebrations. I asked our metastatic hotline volunteers for their take on the reality of living with metastatic disease. Here's one contribution, anonymously:
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To hear the pharmaceutical companies tell it, you would think that metastatic women are just NOT enrolling in their clinical trials. Dig a little deeper and you discover that more often than not, they are being turned away.
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Good news for women with metastatic breast cancer! On January 29^th the FDA approved a new drug option for HER2+ metastatic women: Tykerb in combination with Femara.
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The holidays are always a joyful and stressful time of year. Being metastatic and dealing with family and friends complicates things.
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"Breast cancer is not pretty, pink, sexy, only for older women, the 'good' kind of cancer, fun, cured with a positive attitude, only for October." So says a T-shirt that's popular on the message board bcmets.org.
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You're walking down the street, you look pretty hot (and not because the sun is out!). You look healthy even though you're just coming back from a doctor's appointment where you've been told that the last PetCT scan showed progression and that you will be changing chemos . . .
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Remember the movie "Norma Rae"? Sally Fields played a feisty young mill worker whose courageous fight led to the unionization of a notorious anti-union employer in North Carolina.
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