Now that JaneRA has passed away, I have decided to stop contributing to these boards. I have been participating on and off for nearly six years and it is now time to go.
But, before I go, I thought I would share some things I have learned over the years:
It is important not to forget your health beyond breast cancer survival. Some things, like avoiding obesity, may have benefits for breast cancer survival, but definitely help to prevent serious health problems such as lymphoedema and diabetes. The recommended amount of exercise combined with a diet rich in fruits and vegetables may help with breast cancer survival, but definitely helps avoid other serious problems such as heart disease. Even things that are not shown to improve breast cancer survival are still worthwhile, especially given that many cancer treatments have bad effects on overall health. The scientific studies that have been done have found that the links between a sensible diet by itself and breast-cancer related survival are fairly weak, but a sensible diet has been shown to benefit overall survival by lowering death from other causes, such as heart disease. Getting enough vitamin D perhaps might be good for cancer survival, but is definitely good for maintaining bone health, which is a common problem among breast cancer patients. A positive attitude does not help improve overall survival, but has psychological benefits for those who survive cancer, so if your odds are reasonable, I think it makes sense to try to be positive.
If your odds are poor, then the important thing to remember is that you need to get busy living or you’ll just get busy dying, even if you live. I had a great uncle who spent 25 years with incurable skin cancer and all he did was moan about how it was killing him. He eventually died of heart disease. With all respect to Dr Harvey posting that has at times been posted on the message boards, it always struck me that his advice to take things really easy after treatment and perhaps consider new directions for the future wasn’t necessarily that credible for patients like me where even the oncologist is extremely pessimistic and long-term plans a bit unrealistic. I have kept myself very busy over the past six years and don’t regret it a bit. Only the passage of time has really helped me.
Whenever there are reports of a wonder drug in the press, it is important to check out what the actual benefit is, particularly for secondary cancer, since often the median benefit is quite small. At the same time, there are some promising drugs in the pipeline and some people get disproportionately large benefits from a particular drug. One of the most user-friendly websites for finding clinical trials, even those in the UK, is clinicaltrials.gov
The scientific fight against cancer is likely to be long. Occasionally on the boards you will run across someone who claims that scientists can cure cancer in rats so why can’t they cure it in humans or they can send people into space, so of course they can cure cancer. In fact, there are only a few substances that can clear cancer out of rats and most of them have been tried in humans or are under development in some way. Yes, they can send people into space, but that is physics which follows well-known rules much more than biology does.
Cancer stories are often very complex. Journalists, even in stories that are supposedly the unaltered truth, often spin breast cancer stories in a particular direction to make the story more interesting, but sometimes the truth is lost in the process, so it is useful to get another take on them. There is a U.S. government website, Medline Plus that provides the daily feeds from Healthday and Reuters news wires and sorts them by health topic.
Finally, if someone dies and you know the family, express your condolences. It is very helpful to them.
All the best for 2010 and for the future.
Best wishes,
Christine MH
