Cancer Care

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) projection in a landmark Trends in Cancer report, yet to be made public, the country will see a 21 per cent overall increase - over 1.06 lakh additional cases of cancer every year in women by 2020, as against 79,000 new cases of cancer in men during the same period.

This landmark analysis, based on the pattern of cancer incidence between 1982-2005 (24 years) in India, has made some startling revelations. Cases of leukaemia or blood cancer will increase by almost 77 per cent in women by 2020, followed by cancer of the colon (69 per cent) and liver (61 per cent). However, in sheer numbers, the main culprit in the next 10 years will be breast cancer.
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STOCKTON - Pink was the color of the night at Stockton Arena as the Thunder promoted breast cancer awareness. And many of the fans followed the franchise’s direction.

The fourth annual Thunder Goes Pink event began Friday at the arena and will continue at 7:30 p.m. today. All proceeds benefit the American Cancer Society’s Stockton field office and St. Joseph’s Foundation Breast-Cancer Services.

The Thunder played the game on pink ice and in jerseys trimmed with pink lightning bolts, and the outside of Stockton Arena was lit by pink lights.

The crowd of 6,976 included fans wearing pink jerseys, hats, shirts, sweaters and wigs, and some decided to dye their hair.

Tammy Coutroul of Oakdale had pink highlights in her hair to complement her jersey.

“I thought it would be fun, and this event goes beyond belief,” said Coutroul, 42, who has attended each Thunder Goes Pink event. “It’s so important to raise awareness for this disease.”

The Thunder will donate $2 from each ticket sold this weekend to charity; the team has raised $110,000 in the first three years.

Contact reporter Scott Linesburgh at (209) 546-8281 or slinesburgh@recordnet.com.

On Friday, almost 3,000 walkers took off on their 60-mile journey as part of Dallas’ Breast Cancer 3-Day walk. It also was the starting line for more than 450 volunteers.

Volunteers pay $90 each for the privilege of working as a crew member, helping to set up camps, clean up behind the walkers, serve meals and provide support. But many of them already have a much larger emotional investment.

Gary West of Colleyville does it for his 43-year-old daughter, Sheri West Lewis, who died just days before she was to walk in the event in 2007.

daughter fought for 51/2 years,” West said Thursday as he helped mark a tent grid at Brookhaven College, where this weekend’s walkers will sleep between legs of their effort.

West still pauses to overcome emotion while giving details of his daughter’s illness. Lewis discovered a lump on her breast while on a 2001 business trip to New York, where she was consulting a sponsor of the 3-Day walk.

“From then until her passing, she was really involved,” said West, who has worked as a crew member since 2004. “She insisted that her mother and I get involved.”

In 2006, his daughter had chemotherapy two days before the walk.

“She walked 40 miles of the 60 during that 3-Day,” West said.

Dallas is one of 15 cities to host a Breast Cancer 3-Day walk. About 2,900 walkers have raised $2,300 each to participate in the 60-mile trek through Addison, Farmers Branch, Dallas and Richardson.

Last year, the Dallas walk raised $7.9 million. Eighty-five percent of the proceeds go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, with 15 percent going to the National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund.

The walkers will complete their 60 miles on Sunday, with a closing ceremony at Fair Park.

‘Extremely selfless’

Volunteers hand out treats along the route, offer words of encouragement and even give foot massages.

“Everybody who works crew for the Breast Cancer 3-Day is extremely selfless,” West said. “You wind up having such emotional rewards. You do it once, you’ll understand.”

The walkers who receive the support are grateful.

“They give you the energy to keep walking,” said Jill Cumnock of Frisco, who is walking for her mother, who died of breast cancer in 1981.

Laura Johnson of Saginaw said crew members help the walkers from start to finish.

“They are awesome,” she said. “They are all along the route. They are cheering us on. They are supplying us with everything we need, even if we forget something. Their emotional support is better than anything,”

Johnson is walking for a friend who has metastatic breast cancer and has been fighting for 17 years.

“I am walking for her,” she said. “I am fighting for her.”

Felicia Christian of Waxahachie said the volunteers are pleasant and show a genuine interest in the walkers’ needs.

“They have excellent volunteers out here,” said Christian, who is walking for friends and family who are survivors of the disease.

Many crew volunteers have previously walked the event, including Andrea Keller of Irving.

“This year, she’s decided to crew,” West said. “She’s getting to experience it from both sides of the garbage can.”

Keller can be found sporting a neon-green shirt identifying herself as a Sole Sisters team member, supporting both Sheri Lewis and Kristi Johnson, a sister of a fellow teacher who died earlier this year of breast cancer.

“I loved walking, but I’m much more the person who cheers you and is always excited to do different things,” Keller said. “I am so excited to be behind the scenes.”

From all over

Many volunteers are from outside North Texas, including Richard Needham of Lawton, Okla.

Needham walked the 2007 3-Day in Philadelphia with a woman he was dating who had twice had breast cancer. While that relationship did not work out, he stayed with 3-Day. Last year, he walked in Washington, D.C.

“I got hooked the first walk; to me it’s an awesome cause,” Needham said. “I want to walk or crew every city that this does.”

Like Keller, Needham was seeking a new perspective – as a volunteer.

“I know how to walk. I wanted to see what the other side of the 3-Day is like, so I decided to crew this year,” Needham said.

“I’ve always wanted to see what everything looks like, because as a walker, you come into camp and everything is all set up.”

Crew members set up large tents for dining, showers and medical support, while walkers generally set up their own two-man tents for sleeping.

The volunteers also raise additional money to help find a cure.

But not everything can be measured in dollars, West said.

“It gives one a feeling of peace, knowing that what little you are doing is hopefully going to keep my granddaughter or somebody else’s daughter or sister from going through what my daughter went through,” West said. “Everybody’s goal – who is out here working – is to be here when they finally come up for a cure for breast cancer and stop it.”

Source : www.dallasnews.com

Researchers from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Milan, Italy, have reported that women with Stage T1a,b, N0M0 HER2-positive breast cancers have a have a high recurrence rate without the administration of adjuvant chemotherapy or Herceptin® (trastuzumab). These data suggest that these women should be treated with Herceptin®-based adjuvant chemotherapy. The details of these two studies appeared in early online publications on November 2, 2009 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Twenty to 25 percent of breast cancers overexpress HER2, which leads to increased growth of cancer cells and a worse prognosis. Fortunately, the development of drugs that specifically target HER2-positive cells has improved prognosis for women with HER2-positive breast cancer.
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“Let me start with the most obvious question: What’s with the hair?” she asked a crowd in Orange County, motioning to the graying buzz cut that replaced her auburn wigs of recent months.

“I’m happy to tell you that having been through surgery and chemotherapy and radiation, breast cancer is officially behind me. I feel absolutely great and I am raring to go.”

In California, where politics and drama are wedded, the Republican candidate’s public embrace of a disease that has ravaged millions of American women could resonate with women, who comprise the majority of the state’s 17 million voters and traditionally have been willing to cross party lines for candidates they like, experts said.
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After members of The Hagen Team, as they identified themselves, crossed the finish line Sunday to conclude their 1-mile walk, they looked around for the group’s namesake, who had separated from the pack.

Kathy Hagen was only three weeks removed from her last chemotherapy treatment. She would later admit that just days before the Race for the Cure, she wasn’t sure how she would hold up physically.

But wearing a pink survivor T-shirt Sunday morning, she looked strong and invigorated when she eventually caught up to her group across from Union Station — after opting to go the full distance on the 5-kilometer course.
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The first research to look at recent trends in European cancer incidence, mortality and survival together has shown that cancer prevention and management in Europe is moving in the right direction. However, the research reveals that variations between countries in policies for mass screening, access to health care and treatment are reflected in the different cancer rates.

The research is published in a special issue of the European Journal of Cancer (the official journal of ECCO – the European CanCer Organisation) on cancer control [1] and coincides with the start of work by the European Commission to draw up a new EU Cancer Action Plan. The co-editors of the issue, Jan Willem Coebergh and Tit Albreht, expect the special issue to inform the discussions during the drawing up of the Cancer Action Plan, as well as providing information for an updated version of the European Cancer Code.
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After disclosing that her breast cancer, first diagnosed before the 2004 election, had spread to her bones, Elizabeth Edwards became a symbol of how to cope with recurrence. The wife of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, Elizabeth sat down with NEWSWEEK’s Jonathan Alter at the Edwardses’ new house in Chapel Hill, N.C. Excerpts:

ALTER: How are you feeling physically?
EDWARDS: Fine. I had a broken rib, a fairly benign condition, but that’s the only uncomfortable part.

Let’s talk about what I think a lot of cancer survivors think of as being almost harder than the physical pain: the emotional cost.
When I was first diagnosed, I was going to beat this. I was going to be the champion of cancer. And I don’t have that feeling now. The cancer will eventually kill me. It’s going to win this fight. I come from a family of women who live into their 90s, so it’s taken something real from me. There was a time during the day when we were getting test results when I felt more despair than I ever felt in any of the time I had the breast cancer. I have a lot that I intend to do in this life. We’re here at the house. I’m going to build paths through these woods so we can take long walks that I intended to take when I was 80. And I have a 6-year-old son. I was going to hold his children someday. Now I’m thinking I have only a slim chance of seeing him graduate high school. How do I accomplish, in what time I’ve got left, all that I’m meant to do? I’m writing a letter to my kids. It gives them something to hold on to and because you’ve got to butt yourself into their lives even after you’re gone.
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Brad Petit
Media General Columbia Bureau
Published: July 1, 2008

COLUMBIA — The fight against breast and cervical cancer in South Carolina is getting a boost, thanks to state funds that will help support a program that provides screening to low-income, uninsured women in the Palmetto State.

Lawmakers and officials announced Tuesday the allocation of $2 million for the Best Chance Network, an organization that has until now received federal funds — but not state dollars — to assist women who otherwise would have little, if any, access to early-stage cancer detection.

State Rep. Cathy Harvin, D-Summerton, said the new money should help close the treatment gap between women who can and cannot pay for health care.

“While these cancers are found evenly distributed among women of all ages, races and incomes, there has not been all-inclusive access to screening,” Harvin, a breast cancer survivor, said. “The result has been that South Carolina’s low-income women or those with little or no health insurance have been more likely to succumb to the disease. They have been more likely to die.”

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control says the state money will provide about 9,000 women with cancer screening.

In addition, DHEC said it plans to lower the minimum eligibility age from 47 to 40 by September.

The Best Chance Network is jointly implemented and coordinated by DHEC and the American Cancer Society.

DHEC Deputy Commissioner for Health Services Lisa Waddell said early cancer detection is critical in improving a person’s chances of survival, and that’s where uninsured patients are at a disadvantage.

“Underserved and low-income women … are more likely to be diagnosed late,” Waddell said. “We know there are disparities for breast and cervical cancer that are glaring and significant.”

On the whole, uninsured cancer victims are 60 percent more likely to die from the illness than patients with insurance, according to the American Cancer Society. In South Carolina alone, the group said, more than 2,500 women will be diagnosed with breast and cervical cancer this year.

The funding was announced at a news conference at Palmetto Health Comprehensive Breast Center in Columbia, and was attended by health care providers, cancer survivors and advocates.

Among them was Cathlean Kelly, a health advocate whose breast cancer was detected by an examination provided by Best Chance Network.

Kelly said the new funds will help satisfy a pressing demand.

“Where we can get more money to help (Best Chance Network) … we need it,” she said.

Harvin said that in addition to its humanitarian appeal, there are practical and economic benefits from devoting state tax dollars to cancer screening.

“We can significantly lengthen the productive work lives of those impacted,” she said. “We can substantially reduce the state’s expenditures associated with the escalating costs of care that result from late-stage cancer discovery.”

Source : www.scnow.com

It was a destiny Melodee stokes desperately wanted to avoid. The youngest of five girls, Melodee watched her oldest sister, Brenda, now 60, battle breast cancer twice. Last year another sister, Cindy, died of the disease at the age of 47. “She was a beautiful, vibrant woman, and when she died she was a very frail, sick person,” says Melodee. “I didn’t want to put my family through that.” In April 2005, Melodee had a blood test to see if she, like her two sisters, carried a mutation in the breast-cancer gene, BRCA2, which increases the odds of both breast and ovarian cancer. She did. Two months later, Melodee had both her breasts removed; this past summer, she had a hysterectomy. “I’m going to do something that will make sure I’m never sick like Aunt Cindy,” she explained to her daughters Heather, 11, and Danielle, 8. The girls responded, says Melodee, now 40, with “the biggest smiles.”
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