October 2025

Happy Breast Cancer Awareness month. Like many affected by breast cancer, I have mixed emotions about the notoriously excessive campaign that is Breast Cancer Awareness. From a whole population perspective I’ve always thought the month was a little over the top. I mean, do we need to see pink at EVERY athletic event? My feeling is that the message gets lost in the hoopla. I also feel that society recklessly over sexualizes breast cancer awareness. I just saw an ad on the back of a bus here in Madison showing a naked lady holding cantaloupes in front of her breasts (“save the melons”)…to promote “being vegan” as a way to prevent breast cancer. Yes, it was an ad promoting a vegan diet. And not that I have anything against the vegan diet, I’m sure it is a good idea overall and probably has been shown to reduce cancer risk. But I’m also sure plenty of vegans get breast cancer and I KNOW many breast cancer patients try all kinds of diets as last-ditch efforts to beat the disease and still die. So let’s settle down with all this “beating breast cancer through diet” talk that really just places blame on people with cancer. 

From an individual perspective, of course I appreciate all of the fundraising and awareness that has directly positively impacted my life. I can almost guarantee you I would not be here today without all the drug research that led to discovery of the life saving medications I have been on. It is not lost on me that my insurance, while not perfect or without delay, covers my medications and scans. Many, many women (and maybe a few men) have fought tirelessly for conveniences I now take for granted as a patient. In Wisconsin, for example, we have the Wisconsin Breast Cancer Coalition that fights for potentially life saving legislation for women and breast cancer patients. Most recently, Gail’s Law was passed by the state senate to ensure the necessary additional scans and tests are covered for women with dense breast tissue that renders mammograms less useful. While I didn’t have dense breast tissue, as a young woman mammograms were less effective for me and I needed additional ultrasounds to help diagnose my breast cancer. I imagine this additional testing would have been easy for me to delay a year or two had it not been covered by my insurance. And obviously in hindsight, another year or two may have made the difference between life and death for me. I definitely feel it is important to acknowledge and support the many programs that have helped me and so many others over the years. Some examples locally include Gilda’s Club, Breast Cancer Recovery, and ABCD (After Breast Cancer Diagnosis).   

I have been blessed with relatively good health for the past 7 1/2 years and thankfully my health updates have been fairly dull as far as metastatic breast cancer goes. I had a chest CT and abdominal MRI recently and the results were fairly similar to the scans from April. The spot on the liver was the same size (this surprised me as I expected it to either grow or shrink, just another example of the unpredictable nature of cancer) and some of the vertebral spots were slightly decreased in size, “due to treatment effects”. That was exciting, because as successful as I assume palbociclib (Ibrance ®) was for me, I was never able to really quantify the success because I essentially had clear scans after the radiation in 2018 and before the liver progression in 2024. Overall slightly positive news and we stay the course of continuing capivasertib (Truqap ®…I guess drug companies don’t have to follow basic grammar rules) and hormonal therapies, all of which I’ve been tolerating fairly well. 

Finally, this fall, after 7 years of intentions, I stepped foot into Gilda’s Clubhouse. I attended a couple group therapy sessions and I’m glad I did. I think a cancer diagnosis merits consideration of seeking out this type of support. As unique as each person and situation may be with cancer, there are many commonalities involved in a cancer battle. Any time someone would bring up an issue from treatment to family support to just general living with cancer, I could either completely relate or at least have some sense of empathy about what they were going through. It was good and I think this will be a good additional support in my fight.   

Let’s face it, we are all going through something. Sometimes we just need to be in community with others who can relate. I’m hoping Gilda’s Club can be that for me.