I've participated thus far in three different clinical trials. None of the clinical trials involved medication, but rather different ways of testing and interacting with different types of tissue. Sometimes I've participated by sending the paraffin blocks of tumor cells (also called "tumor blocks") and sometimes I've participated by having blood draws at various times … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #28 →

Living while dying is a hard thing. Learning to balance treatments and side effects and the struggle of being a forever patient with life can suck every bit of energy from our increasingly frail bodies. Our organs and bones and tissues can only withstand so much. And our doctors and the treatments take us close … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #27 →

I didn't know much about inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) until I started reading Anya Silver's poetry and was connected through her to Ginny Mason at the Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Besides the fact that Anya's poetry has touched my life in so many ways, I am grateful for the information and advocacy about IBC … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #26 →

Language matters and the words that people use are so important. Here's some words that are often misunderstood in this context: Cure: many people who have breast cancer are told they are cured when they are at the place where cancer cannot be visibly detected in imaging tests or on bloodwork after a breast cancer … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #25 →

When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer back in 2017, my surgeon drew diagrams very similar to the ones on this slide. She told me how having HER2 receptors used to be a really really bad thing, but that there was an amazing new medication that I could take if I had them. She … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #24 →

What does it mean to be hormone receptor positive? At a basic level, hormones that each of our bodies make naturally are fuel for the cancer. If there is estrogen or progesterone in high amounts in the body, then the cancer has more fuel to grow and spread. When the fuel is block and removed … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #23 →

Receptors are how we often successfully target cancer cells and when there are no receptors, those same medications may not work. Our sisters with metastatic triple negative breast cancer have a particularly rough experience since the only medication that is usually effective are the harshest IV chemotherapeutic agents. This can mean some very rough days … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #22 →

I've regularly dealt with headaches as a child and as an adult, so after my diagnosis, this experience did continue. My doctors have always been very very concerned about my headaches and I've had multiple brain MRIs to ensure that there were no metastases in my brain. For now, there haven't been any, but we … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #21 →

For those of us with hormone positive, Her2 negative MBC, the liver is the most likely place for metastases after the bones. Knowing the symptoms and the likelihood for different areas of progression is a good thing to be aware of so that we can educate our medical team on what's going on. We will … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #20 →