I was sorry to read that Joyce Taylor, chief engineer of the Maine Department of Transportation, was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I hope she continues to do well. I’m glad to see breast cancer awareness promoted, because we with breasts and those who love people with breasts must pay heed.
But an opportunity was missed in the BDN’s Oct. 8 article on Taylor to inform women that 19 states have laws that require women to be told after a mammogram whether their breasts are dense.
Density can mask the cancer from which you think your mammogram is protecting you. If you are not told your breasts are dense and if you think you are being attentive to prevention with an annual mammogram, you might one day feel the bulge of a tumor before it’s even visible on your mammogram. That is my story.
Maine has no such law that requires women be informed of their breast density. Since 2012, there has been a “resolve” on the books, directing a review of strategies to improve communication among patients and physicians. What that really means is that women with dense breasts will continue to be diagnosed with breast cancer late — a bad thing, because early detection matters with breast cancer.
Taylor was lucky her treatment wasn’t as bad as she expected it would be. She’s unusual. For most, recovery from chemotherapy and radiation takes a few years, and it is never actually a full recovery. Breast reconstruction leaves much to be desired. The hit to finances and self-confidence can be disastrous. The loss of time is a waste. Complications large and small never seem to end. Tiny twinges in your body are frightening.
Aren’t we tired yet of women — and men, too — being diagnosed with breast cancer? My family and I have needed to learn the difficult lesson that it’s not always someone else.
We must be doing something wrong.
Billions of dollars have been spent on breast cancer research, and pink is everywhere. Yet people continue to be diagnosed with and die from breast cancer. Once breast cancer is visible on a clear mammogram or MRI, 10 million cancer cells already are present in the body. The National Cancer Institute estimates a woman in the United States has a one-in-eight chance of developing invasive breast cancer during her lifetime. This risk was about one in 11 in 1975. In the U.S. alone, breast cancer kills about 40,000 women and more than 400 men each year and 522,000 women around the world.
We can’t afford more years of business as usual. Little has changed in breast cancer diagnosis and survival. That is why many have lent their support to the national Breast Cancer Coalition Deadline 2020 campaign, which has set a deadline of Jan. 1, 2020, to know how to end breast cancer. Both of Maine’s senators support the deadline.
One of the most important actions the National Breast Cancer Coalition is taking to know how to prevent breast cancer is by working with researchers and patient advocates on the Artemis Project for a preventive breast cancer vaccine. That’s right — research focused solely on a vaccine to prevent breast cancer. The coalition imagines a world where we do not need to worry about toxic treatments because no one needs to be treated. Another component to the Artemis Project is an initiative that examines metastasis, the process by which cancer spreads and becomes lethal.
Pink shirts, earlier detection and more research on treatment haven’t changed breast cancer’s prognosis. A vaccine preventing breast cancer doesn’t need to be a dream. It should be possible in the lifetimes of our children so they will never be diagnosed with breast cancer, nor will their mothers or aunts or grandmothers or friends.
Nancy Greene of Deer Isle is a semi-retired psychotherapist. She is a member of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, the Maine Breast Cancer Coalition and Are You Dense Advocacy.