[Barbara2]

Hi, Amy,
Thank you for taking the time to articulate your thoughts in a way that has so much meaning and understanding for all of us. When reading your message, I kept thinking...hurray... someone who is addressing the hard to talk about topics and facts, and has expressed it so well.

It seems that breast cancer is glossed over for the public and the real message and concern about this cancer gets lost because we tend to hide undesirable truths. It's a hard concept to balance. We don't want to sound negative, but yet at the same time people need to know and understand cancer's realities.

When I was diagnosed, I asked my onc what my survival chances were. He told me, but what I didn't realize until much later...sometime after chemo and when my brain started working again...was that he gave me a 5 year survival rate. If he told me "5 years," I do not recall it.

When Mrs. Edwards became stage 4, the news programs had on doctors and guests that were specialists in the breast cancer field, and it seemed that all of them skirted around the truth. It sounded like she was fine, and always would be.

Your message has been much appreciated.