To the Editor:
Re “Elizabeth Edwards, 1949-2010: Successes and Cruel Reversals, Played Out on a Political Stage” (obituary, front page, Dec. 8):
Elizabeth Edwards remains a hero in the metastatic community. She gave a face, her face, to metastatic breast cancer. She let the world know that she was living with a terminal diagnosis.
Mrs. Edwards lived three years and nine months with this disease. Some of us get lucky and respond well to the bag of treatments and live six, eight or, amazingly, more years; but eventually all treatments stop working for everyone with a metastatic diagnosis.
One woman dies of metastatic breast cancer every 14 minutes in the United States, and no one knows how to stop the metastatic cells from spreading once the process has begun.
While we all want a cure, what we need now is for researchers to focus on how to stop metastasis once it has begun, thus taking the fear out of a breast cancer diagnosis and making Stage 4 breast cancer a truly chronic disease.
Ellen Moskowitz
President
Metastatic Breast Cancer Network
New York, Dec. 8, 2010
President
Metastatic Breast Cancer Network
New York, Dec. 8, 2010
Posts
"...but eventually all treatments stop working for everyone with a metastatic diagnosis."
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but I believe that statement to be false. Granted, not many people survive mets, but it's not out of the question. As with any curve, some people live with metastatic breast cancer and die of other diseases. I know a woman whose stage 4 breast cancer didn't kill her, diabetes did. If I know one person who refutes that statement, more exist. I think it does the breast cancer community a disservice to make a blanket, all-inclusive, rash statement about the outcome of mets. It may make for good copy and prod researchers, but those of us living with mets deserve better than a prognosis of doom.
Elaine, I am so glad to hear that you know someone with mets who died of other causes. I know and have heard of women who have lived many years with mets (18 is the highest), usually to bone only, in very few places, and with ER/PR+ cancer. But in the end, the cancer seems to get them.
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to be on the far right hand end of the survival curve, and that I've lived 8+ years so far makes me a good candidate. But in addition to more than 20 sites of bone mets, I now have liver mets that respond slowly to treatment.
I truly believe that we need a cure. But until then, I personally also need more treatments to extend both my life and my quality of life so that I can live until researchers find a cure.
My guess is that Elaine's friend died of diabetes before cancer had the chance to kill her. There is such a thing as a prognosis of doom, and then there is being realistic while at the same time living life to the fullest which includes taking advance of all that research and current practice has to offer. I love Jill for her living life to the fullest (as so deftly expressed in her menu descriptions) while giving us detailed accounting of her health and medical adventures. Not to mention keeping “think before you pink” in front of us. I have lost too many friends to breast cancer (one is too many), not to mention other cancers as well, but one keeps hoping, praying, lighting candles, chanting that others we know and love will not die from this also.
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