Andrea Mitchell

The cancer blogs and message boards are buzzing today with the news that Andrea Mitchell has an early stage cancer and announced it on her program.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/nbc-andrea-mitchell-breast-cancer-191413850.html

I'm happy for her that it was caught early--after all I was in that same place 19 years ago with a "100%" cure and am now stage IV--0% cure. I don't want to bring you down, but I need to say a few things because I don't think the general public, the media and even much of the breast cancer community understands the strong, visceral reactions that a stage IV metastatic patient feels when they hear a story like this.

1. I'M CURED:  I cringed immediately when Andrea said she "had" breast cancer. She still has it and needs to ask her doctors the definition of a breast cancer "cure".

2. EARLY DETECTION: Her positive statement that "This disease can be completely curable if you find it at the right time" is false. 20-30% of those with early stage cancer will have a recurrence, which can be metastatic.

For those of us with stage IV, we read into Andrea's statement that anyone with a more advanced diagnosis has only herself to blame. But not all cancers are detectable on mammograms and even with annual mammograms and annual checkups, people get recurrences, often metastatic.

3. BREAST CANCER FUNDING: Focusing exclusively on prevention and early detection, pink ribbons and survivors has skewed the fundraising and the public perception of this disease. Many people (including mbc'ers) are tired of Pinktober and if you were to ask the man or woman on the street what they thought of breast cancer, they might say:

Everybody seems to get it. It's completely treatable and curable if you're positive and have detected it early. It's one of the "better" cancers. It gets too much attention and too much funding.

Yet, 155,000 in the US are living with metastatic breast cancer, 40,000 a year die from it. It is the number one cancer killer of women in the 20-59 age group, the leading cause of cancer death for women worldwide and the 2nd leading cause of death by cancer in the US for women, after lung cancer.

And only an estimated 2-5% of breast cancer research funding goes to studying metastases. It's unbelievable how misguided and misdirected it's all become!

And someone like Andrea Mitchell who is a position to report and research the full story of breast cancer disappointingly resorts to the same cliches.

My 2 cents. Thanks for reading.

If you want more information, read:

www.mbcnetwork.org
plug for the home team--the organization I work with

http://www.breastcancerdeadline2020.org/know/31-myths-and-truths
National Breast Cancer Coalition myths and facts about breast cancer--you'll be surprised!

http://ihatebreastcancer.wordpress.com/
excellent, funny, perceptive blog

PS I revised this post after calming down and taking a deep breath last night!  Whew! Thanks for reading.