Cancer Care

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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Last fall, Elizabeth Edwards was the guest speaker at a Boston conference sponsored by NEWSWEEK and Harvard Medical School. She was in the midst of a tour promoting her recently published book, “Saving Graces.” Although Edwards spoke in detail about the greatest trials in her life, especially the death of her 16-year-old son in a car accident and her struggle with breast cancer, she conveyed an inspiring optimism about her future. That optimism reappeared today when she and her husband, presidential contender John Edwards, announced that her cancer has returned, this time to her bones. Still, she told a crowded press conference: “I don’t look sickly. I don’t feel sickly.” Despite the devastating news, the couple vowed to continue campaigning. “This is the most extraordinarily unselfish woman I have ever known,” her husband said, with a touch of awe in his voice. Her doctor is waiting for the results of some tests taken this week before starting treatment. To find out more about what Elizabeth Edwards and other breast cancer survivors might expect, NEWSWEEK Senior Editor Barbara Kantrowitz spoke with Dr. Jo Anne Zujewski, investigator in the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis for the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Excerpts:
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Cancer survivors know all too well how important a screening is.

Caroline Love met a woman who conquered breast cancer, but her screening for the disease almost didn’t happen.

For Ellyn Reid, it wasn’t a convenient time for cancer.

In 2006, she had just been through a divorce and was raising two children.

Reid was in school, trying to pass nuclear physics and she didn’t have health insurance.
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He has a house and a beautiful vineyard on about 18 acres. But something is missing, or rather, someone.

After a battle with breast cancer that lasted more than seven years, Brown’s wife of 48 years, Arlene, passed away in 2005.

But Brown continued to fight the disease in an unusual way: by creating a new line of wines called “Cleavage Creek” and donating a percentage of the profits from the winery toward cutting-edge breast cancer research. (more…)

Cancer agencies launched a massive new study yesterday that aims to track 300,000 Canadians over two or three decades, potentially generating valuable new data on what causes the disease.

Unprecedented in size for this country, the project will conduct surveys and collect blood and other specimens from participants across the nation, trying to uncover the environmental, genetic and lifestyle factors that lead to various malignancies.
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Jay Jordane, 54, of Celina was one of more than 13,000 runners and walkers supporting breast cancer research and awareness Saturday at the Susan G. Komen North Texas Race for the Cure in Plano.

The Komen Race for the Cure is the largest series of 5K runs and fitness walks in the world, according to a press release. (more…)