fight the powers that be

[v-ness]

here is a letter i have written to the local newspaper and the newspaper of the women's college i work at. i plan to also mail it to the boston globe and new york times as well as various & sundry government officials:

"I'd like to show the scar and dent in my left breast to the incredibly misguided and downright ignorant government task force who claims "breast self exams do no good". Motivated by two of my sister's friends who were diagnosed with breast cancer in the past year, I started doing self exams in earnest. My last mammogram was in March of 2009 and showed no sign of any cancer. I didn't learn breast exams from a doctor, I learned them by feeling the rubber breast in the hospital’s mammogram waiting room. So I fumbled through the self exams, wondering how I'd ever feel something. And then one day I did feel something. A very scary something. In mid-August 2009, five months after my clean mammogram, I found a lump which turned out to be a 1.8 cm breast cancer called Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. It had grown at warp speed in five months because it was HER2+, a particularly aggressive form found in 20% of breast cancers. If I had waited until my OBGYN appointment, it may have already spread to my lymph nodes. If I had waited until my next mammogram in March 2010, it might have been Stage 4 by then. Instead, I caught it at Stage 1. I still have to go through chemo and a year of Herceptin, but I'd say my life is worth it. If anything, women need to be taught by any means possible to do breast self-exams and learn what to feel for.

The suggestion on the part of the Task Force that women don't need to start mammograms until the age of 50 is nothing short of ludicrous. I've been going since age 40 and thus knew all along that I have dense breast tissue which makes tumors more difficult to spot. Because of yearly mammograms I also knew that I had groups of calcifications which were watched carefully every 6 months for about a year and a half because they sometimes have the potential to morph into breast cancer (mine have nothing to do with the cancer I actually did develop). If it was up to the task force, I wouldn't have even begun breast cancer screenings through mammograms because I am not yet 50.

I am living proof not only that mammograms are essential *before* the age of 50, but so are self-exams. Women of all ages need to be pro-active about their breast health - demand yearly mammograms and take the five minutes monthly to perform a breast exam that could save their lives. It saved mine."

valerie

[duga35]

That's a great letter!

You go girl!!! I hope that it gets spread all over the US

[v-ness]

thank you, duga. i see you're a fellow high oncotype! glad to know someone else "off the charts".

the newspaper is publishing it and a reporter contacted me asking if she can interview me tomorrow. ironically enough, i have chemo tomorrow, so i have to speak with her after 5 hours at the hospital - exhausted with chemo brain. i will have a hard time being articulate so i wrote myself notes tonight. i'm all nervous!

i hope the college paper publishes the letter because the young need to know how to do breast exams and know that they can save your life. i think i'll also write the alumnae magazine (i'm a smith alum). no one should buy into this lunacy and even if the task force isn't interested in 'individuals', the public is.

valerie