How many progress to Stage IV?

['lizbeth]

I've heard the elephant in the room statements from the Stage IV.

I suppose since I hang out on the board more than with the Pink campaigns I see cancer differently. Still, to me, it is about winning. I just hate to lose - especially quality and quantity of life, and not just my life, to cancer, and more importantly cancer treatment.

Personally I love numbers. I have a degree in Finance. I worked in Accounting. I'm a pilot. So numbers are comfortable to me. It helps me to quantify the significance of an event or situation.

Looking at the numbers from this conversation I realized that even with the progress of Her2 breast cancer - this is not the same with some other breast cancers. Which is why we need to start encouraging the low expressors of Her2 to join clinical trials for Herceptin, and the Herceptin and E75 vaccine. I think that we can help keep women from progressing into the stage IV club.

We patients are not powerless, if we define and promote what we want with treatments - then we are more likely to receive them. And we need to promote enrollment in clinical trials so that treatments will become available faster.