Additional note: Zanne is the nickname I go by with my friends. It's short for Susanne, using the Americanized spelling instead of the German spelling.
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To me, breast cancer isn’t about statistics, or stages, about survival rates, or about October and the readiness of pink-ribbon items.
For me, breast cancer is about names.
Judy and Sharon – two friends who helped me through some of the toughest times of my life. Both died of metastatic breast cancer; one this year, the other more than 12 years ago.
Then there’s my friend Zanne, who I met writing fan fiction and who just got married this past weekend. Earlier this year, she was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer.
As she constantly reminds me, in her case at stage IV, there is no cure. She’s fighting the cancer with everything she has, and there’s a good chance she will be around for a long time.
But there’s also the inevitable fact that the cancer cannot be eradicated, and that sooner or later, it will probably take her life. And the real kick in the pants? It won’t be the breast cancer that kills her then – not technically. It will be cancer that will have spread to her lungs, her lymph nodes, her brain, or even her bone marrow.
Cancer goes where it can to escape and survive.
I get behind and support breast cancer awareness in October – and the goals of finding a cure and stopping this disease from taking the lives of people I know. I remain optimistic that, perhaps in my lifetime, we will find a way to take breast cancer from the scary, incomprehensible secret to just another disease.
In the meantime, though, I want to spread the word about stage IV breast cancer – aka, metastatic breast cancer. According to Metavivor, a site dedicated to women suffering from stage IV breast cancer, here are the facts:
• Metastatic breast cancer receives approximately 2 percent of the funds raised for research.
• While only 6 to 10 percent of patients are diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer, 30 percent will eventually progress to stage IV.
• The primary focus of breast cancer research is prevention and early detection. That does nothing for the women diagnosed with stage IV – either in the beginning or later.
Metavivor is working hard to address that discrepancy. The organization says it believes that if 30 percent of the women with breast cancer are stage IV, then 30 percent of the funds that are raised should go to stage IV research.
It’s not a bad thought. Breast cancer in and of itself is a devastating disease. To free yourself of the disease and to have it reoccur – which means it has automatically progressed to stage IV – or to be diagnosed in that stage makes it worse. To know that so little effort is being put into stage IV research is infuriating.
I know what my friend Judy went through the final days of her life. I know, because I was there. I watched as she struggled to breathe, finally being put on a bi-pap machine and being placed on numerous drugs to stabilize her condition.
Those drugs were discontinued, the oxygen switched to a nasal cannula the morning she died. The reason was because there was no hope. The cancer had invaded her bones – destroyed her bone marrow. The reason she had so much trouble breathing was because her body wasn’t producing the red blood cells she so desperately needed.
Would Judy’s end have been any different with more research – with more funds put toward stopping cancer that has reached stage IV? I don’t know. Breast cancer isn’t alone in its stage IV challenge. Any form of cancer that reaches that point is difficult, if not impossible, to cure.
But increasing survival rates? Extending survival time? Eventually figuring out how to get rid of Stage IV cancer or keep it from reaching that stage? I think those are laudable goals. And I hope, for everyone who has reached that point, that cancer research can take that step.
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