There are 3 planned online events to mark Secondary Breast Cancer Awareness Day. These are in addition to the information which will be shared on Friday 11 October.
A special live chat on Thursday 10 October 2-3pm - Let’s talk about what it really means living with secondary breast cancer. This will be facilitated by a Clinical Nurse Specialist, Tara and Forum Coordinator Anna.
A dedicated forum discussion thread on Sunday 13 October - sharing and contemplating the impact of a diagnoses of metastatic breast cancer. This will be open between 10-4 and will then be locked but remain on the forum to be read by anyone in the future.
A special live chat on Thursday 17 October 2-3pm - Let’s talk about what is important to you when dying matters. This will be facilitated by a Clinical Nurse Specialist, Tara and Forum Coordinator Anna.
Please could you indicate your interest in participating in any or all of these online events.
My reaction to ‘what is it like living with SBC’ won’t be the same as others. we are all at different stages.
But to BCC I say this. I would love to contribute but I can’t. I try to live as normal life as possible and i work (so setting your forum on a Thursday afternoon sends out a signal itself about your perspective). i cover up my status at work because I can (with the exception of my lovely understanding boss) and because right now i think it would not be in my interest to be more public. I am juggling home, work, husband, friends and family just like my friends, but with hospital, physical effects and emotional rollercoasters attached.
Would be interested to know whether you will be using the answers and outputs from these forum to inform your next phase/next year of campaigning and support?
I’m very interested to see what’s going on for SBCAD as it seems to have been a bit quiet on it. I was asked by BCC several weeks ago to write 500 words on what living with SBC means to me but haven’t heard anything since. I do think there needs to be public awareness in addition to online events and wonder why that this doesn’t seem to be happening this year. I am doing my bit to spread awareness amongst my friends and my facebook page but I can only do so much.
I am only available for the live chat tomorrow and I will do my utmost to remember about it as memory is terrible - effect of the drugs!
I am pleased to see there are extra sessions but I don’t know how well these will be used because I had to search to find this information having been told about the extra chat during Tuesdays session.
This needs to be flagged up somehow so people can see it easily otherwise I fear it wil be the same usual people invoved and it would be really good and much more useful if many more Mets women partcipated
I am encouraged to see that on BCC’s home page there is now quite a lot about “secondary” breast cancer, with the theme (and hashtag) “What not to say” Thanks to BCC for putting this together, and even more thanks to those of you with secondaries who have gone public and told about your own experience.
(Click the BreastCancerCare logo in the upper left corner of this page, to go to BCC’s home page.)
I seem to have missed the first two online events and the third (live chat about dying) takes place on the evening of my birthday when I hope to be too busy celebrating still being alive !
Great that there were some specific events for this daybut I only just found details today too late to take part. maybe more advance warning would have seen a better response. I did check weeks ago but didn’t find the details then.
It is also good to see the issue of ‘secondary’ breast cancer on the home page but overall I am really disasppointed by the lack of coverage in the media today.
Sorry BCC but am I the only one who thinks SBCAD was a total wash out. Two live chats and a one day discussion forum - is that it? I thought SBCAD was about raising awareness amongst the general public of the problems people dealing with secondary have to face.
As for BCC being so generous as to put together some links for those of us with secondary BC, even this has flaws. For example I have just downloaded a leaflet on being diagnosed with Brain metastases, and there are at least four mistakes in it.
Firstly there is absolutely no mention of meningeal mets (mets inthe membrane surrounding the brain), despite these being classified as brain mets. Secondly it states that Stereotactic Radiotherapy may be suitable if there are just one or two small brain mets. In fact as from April the 1st 2013, the number of mets is totally irrelevant. Whether a patient is clinically suitable for SRT and will receive funding for this treatment depends on the total volume. So someone could have quite a large number of brain mets, and providing the total volume was less than 3.5cm they would be considered for treatment (although it would have to be on a Gamma-knife machine, because Cyberknife can only treat up to five). Thirdly BCC describe Herceptin as a treatment for brain mets, which again is incorrect because the molecules in Herceptin are too large to cross the blood brain barrier. That is why patients with Her 2 cancers who are diagnosed with brain mets are switched to another type of monoclonal antibody called Lapatanib, which is thought to cross the blood brain barrier. Finally BCC suggest that chemotherapy is not usually appropriate for brain mets because it cannot cross the blood brain barrier. In fact Capecitabine (an oral chemotherapy) is frequently used to treat brain mets as it can and does cross the blood brain barrier (which is why it is usually teamed with Lapatanib). Also had BCC understood that Leptomeningeal metastases are classified as brain mets too, they would have discovered that intrathecal infusions of Chemo are often used for the treatment of Meningeal Mets.
Come on BCC. You exist to support, provide information and campaign, but if the above is anything to go by you desperately need to pull your socks up.
It is really difficult and confusing to find which thread to give feed-back on about Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day. I’m sure that there was one, and I have been trying to find it to see if anything has been added. The whole thing is just like the day itself … a bit of a damp squibb and almost impossible to find out about. I did find it once, and then it wouldn’t let me post in it so I started a separate thread, only to find out that it should have been put in the one that I wasn’t allowed to contribute in the first place.
Actually having a look … you have it under a separate Board in “I have s breast cancer” (won’t use that word which implies inferiority, to me at least!). Maybe some better link could have been put in so that it is easier to find so others can contribute. The original discussions about MBCAD was on this Board.
Would anyone else like to contribute … and also comment about the idea of making 4.4.2014 the Stabe IV Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day … ?