Are We making Progress?
by Sandra Z. Bruney

After my book came out, I was asked to speak at a number of organizations. I tailored my talk to each group. When I spoke to writers' organizations, I talked about the mechanics of writing and publishing. When I talked to church groups, I talked about the power of faith in healing.

And when I was asked to talk at a Relay for Life meeting, I talked about where we are in our fight to cure cancer. I had been cutting articles out of the newspaper and magazines for three years at this point. I got all of these out to get some facts that I could present to this group.

This is what I found.

The number of breast cancer patients diagnosed in 2001, the year I was diagnosed, was 184,000.Now they predict 211,300 in 2004.

I'd like to think it means more women are getting mammograms, and earlier detection means more cures, right?

Or maybe just more of us are getting breast cancer. One-in-eight odds are just not very good unless you enter a sweepstakes.

My doctor told me that hormone replacement therapy caused my cancer. This was in 2001. In 2002 and 2003, the newspapers were filled with reports from a study done through the Women's Health Initiative that showed that women taking HRT were a greater risk for developing breast cancer -- so much so that the study was halted three years earlier than planned. Subsequent studies by independent groups, among them British Million Women Study, which showed that women on estrogen were 30% more likely to develop breast cancer than those than weren't.

And, the longer you are on HRT, the higher the risk for both breast and ovarian cancer.

Believe me, if I had been given a choice, I would have preferred hot flashes to chemotherapy.

There are other risks such as drinking alcohol and being overweight (fat produces estrogen --who knew?). Seems if we aren't pumping our bodies full of estrogen made from PREgnant MARes' urINe, our bodies do a good job of producing it themselves. Which is why breast cancer patients, after enduring surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, are put on a five-year-regimen of Tamoxifen.

My doctor started me on Arimidex as soon as it was approved, and I am grateful because this new drug, which blocks your body from producing estrogen, so far seems to be more effective. A trial study indicates that women on Arimidex are less than half as likely to develop cancer in the other breast as those on Tamoxifen.

All this is good news. But I have a question: what about all those chickens, pigs and cows we are pumping full of hormones to make them mature faster? Chickens, especially, are treated so they have fuller, bigger breasts.

Would someone please convince me that eating these hormone-enriched chickens isn't as much of a risk factor as drinking a glass of wine or being 20 pounds overweight? I don't think I'm being hysterical, not when the same risk factor is linked to young girls entering puberty years earlier than you and I did.

I guess I could raise free-range chickens in my back yard, if the neighbors wouldn't complain. But I don't think I could eat them. Given my husband's and my tendency to make pets of any creature, including backyard squirrels, we'd be naming them and taking them on vacation with us.

We raise millions through Relay for Life, Walk for the Cure, etc., and I wonder just how much money is spent on researching this particular link to breast cancer. Or is the food industry lobby stronger than 211,300 American women?

So we can give up pork, beef and chicken. If we choose to avoid pesticides by giving up fruits and vegetables as well, that leaves -- let me see -- chocolate.

The good news is that a cup of hot chocolate has been found to have approximately the same benefits as a glass of red wine, which is GOOD for you, although two glasses are BAD for you.

And another thing ...

I was fortunate to have good insurance coverage when I went through treatment. I elected to keep it as a supplement to Medicare when I turned 65 because it has a prescription benefit. But what about other women who are not so fortunate -- those who don't have insurance at all, or who rely exclusively on Medicare or Medicaid? These are women who can't afford to take Tamoxifen or Arimidex on their small, fixed incomes. Without prescription coverage, they just have to take their chances on recurrence.

It makes me angry to read that in 2005, Medicare will be changing the way it pays oncologists, which in turn will force the doctors to switch to older, cheaper drugs for chemotherapy: the drugs that once made chemo patients have to enter a hospital for treatment because of the horrendous side effects.

Are we going backward, or what?

Reading that just made me more determined to hang on to my supplemental as long as I can. I hope and pray I don't have a recurrence, but if I do, I don't want to be sicker than I have to be because our wise and benevolent government won't help pay for the newer, less toxic drugs I need to stay alive.

So -- some good things are happening, and some bad, and some things aren't happening at all. And unless we start lobbying as cancer survivors, they won't.

Ladies, read the newspapers and be aware of what is going on. It could mean your life.

The opinions expressed above are my own. Write me at sandy@cancercant.com if you have a different view or something to add.