Discussing Breast Cancer

I’m not a huge tennis fan (I can count on one finger the number of matches I’ve actually watched). But when a colleague at the Breast Cancer Survival Center here in Fairfield County, CT asked me if I was interested in two comp tickets for survivors sponsored by Femara … I took her up on it because my mother was certain it would be a fantastically fun thing for she and I to do together.

So we went … two survivors, one breast, one ovarian … to the women’s final match at the Pilot Pen Tennis Tournament on Saturday. We were there to witness Svetlana Kuznetsova take the trophy after Agnes Szavay succumbed to her ailing back.

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Remember Lizzie — the young woman I wrote about in my last post? Well, Lizzie loved red shoes. Apparently, a lot. So her mother, Merry Prostic started ‘The Red Shoe Society’ in her memory.

Red shoes mean courage, strength, confidence … what a great way to honor Lizzie. (So refreshingly not pink, don’t you think?)

All profits from shoes sold through The Red Shoe Society go directly to benefit Metacancer. Shop away!

Elizabeth Prostic (Lizzie) was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer in October 2004. She was just 31 years old and a first time mom to a three-month-old baby at the time. She was one of Allison Winn Scotch’s closest friends.

Six months after her diagnosis, Lizzie passed away. Allison still grieves, still mourns … and yes, Lizzie was her inspiration as she started writing The Department of Lost & Found. But all those who’ve battled breast cancer inspire her, not just her friend.

Here’s something Allison said about survivors in a recent interview: “I’ve always walked away with the impression that these women are incredible and that their courage is unmatchable.”

Interestingly, Allison’s fictional character, Natalie, barely resembles Allison’s friend, Lizzie. However, Allison still viewed the book as an opportunity to rewrite her friend’s story: “Not her story in particular, but that of a woman who had so much left to live for. Only this time I could control the ending, rather than watch helplessly from the sidelines.”

Ah, to control the ending. Unfortunately, unless we’re talking about writing a story of our own, we just can’t do that now, can we? We don’t know the cards we’ll be dealt. We just have to make the best of the hand we get.

Allison herself said, “I really believe that life is what you do with it, something Natalie learns along her bumpy road as well. Losing Lizzie only heightened those feelings. The simple, and perhaps cliched, truth is that you only get one shot, and who knows when, how or why that might be stripped away from you.”

As I said yesterday when I reviewed The Department of Lost & Found, Lizzie would be proud of her friend, Allison.

She’d also be proud of her husband, Michael Lundblad, and her parents. Together, they established a foundation in her honor called The MetaCancer Foundation (www.metacancer.org) to provide inspiration and psychosocial support for patients and caregivers living with metastatic cancers.

It’s a great site. If you get a chance, check it out. Meanwhile, in case you don’t, tomorrow I’ll post about the red shoes.

Red shoes, you ask? Red shoes?

Ha, ha … you’ll have to wait and see!

I’m so glad to finally be writing this review because The Department of Lost & Found is the best book I’ve read in a long time. It’s Allison Winn Scotch’s debut novel and though it is a work of fiction, it reads like a memoir, the memoir of someone I wish I knew. No … someone I wish I had as a best girlfriend.

This book is beyond touching … it speaks to your soul. As a survivor, I connect to the fictional main character the way I connect to any member of the sisterhood.

The Department of Lost & Found is not pure chick lit and it’s not pure romance; this book has a little of both genres woven into it and I couldn’t put it down. It was an amazing dichotomy: I couldn’t wait to finish this book and when I finally did, I was sad that is was over because I enjoyed reading it so much. I wished it went on and on. Now, I crave a sequel. (Allison, can you get going on one, please?)

Here’s a synopsis: the book’s heroine, Natalie Miller, a 30-year-old single woman working as a senatorial aide, is loaded with ambition and gumption. Her world is rocked when she’s diagnosed with breast cancer. That’s where the story begins … read this excerpt from page 13:

“So you have to understand that in the span of less than a month, my (disloyal, scum-sucking) boyfriend of two years dumped me (”I can’t handle this” is how he put it, right before I threw a vase at his head, which, surprisingly enough, because he wasn’t much of an athlete, he actually manged to duck); my job, which previously had been my lifeblood, had been paired down to admittedly semidesperate emails; and my health, my mortality, something I’d never even given a flying fig of a thought to, was suddenly in total jeopardy. So it’s not hard to see why I was coming more than slightly undone.”

I mean, even though I have little in common with Nat, her story resonates with me, deeply. That’s the way that cancer thing is … time and time again, I notice, it gives us a shared experience.

A shared experience. I found myself thinking, that’s what bonds Natalie Miller and I together. Then I remember she isn’t human.

Back to the synopsis: After she’s diagnosed, Nat explores her previous “failed” relationships, the five great loves of her life. She considers starting a completely new relationship (with a good friend’s ex, man, that’s messy). She struggles to maintain her foothold at work while her responsibilities are being filled by someone not combating the effects of chemotherapy. She is forced to look at the professional choices she’s makes and why she makes them. She leans on her friends and angers her friends and leans on her friends some more. She’s so real.

This book is filled with many real moments — that’s why it reads like a true story.

Like the night before Nat’s mastectomy when she bids farewell to her breasts (here, I’ve spliced the paragraph, found on page 173, but the entire graf is among my favorites):

“I sat up in the soapy waters of my tub and held them both, my breasts. I wanted to mourn them, to kiss them good-bye and say that I’d miss them, but really I was too angry … These things, these symbols of my womanhood, these swollen mounds that were supposed to feed my children and display my ripeness to the world had done just the opposite … as I looked down on them that night, covered in frothy bubbles and hot water, I despised both them and what they’d done to me.”

Like the way Nat tracked the passing of time with her chemotherapy cycles (page 205):

“That’s what it’s like to live with cancer — it’s hard to remove it from your life, even when you’re talking about something else entirely.”

Like when Nat shopped for a party dress after enduring her treatment and took a good look at herself in the mirror, thinking about the words of another survivor, Susanna (page 263):

“I stood naked in front of the mirror … and stared at my body, so foreign, so different from when I started … and remembered Susanna’s wise words: that my body was just a vessel. What it carried inside of it was what really mattered.”

In The Department of Lost & Found, Allison Winn Scotch aptly balances the seriousness of breast cancer with humor — really funny stuff, stuff that makes me smile just thinking back. Like Nat’s obsession with The Price is Right. Or her adventures with marijuana (for medical purposes of course). I mean, there’s some great comical elements in this book, which lightens the burden of the main character’s disease. And that lightens the burden of ours, doesn’t it?

So there you have it — my take on this brilliant novel. My strong opinion is that this is a must read for any woman, but especially the breast cancer survivor. Well done Allison Winn Scotch. Well done.

Tomorrow I’m going to share a little bit about Allison Winn Scotch’s friend Elizabeth … diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer in October 2004 as a 31 year old first-time mom to a three month old. Clearly the inspiration behind the book, Lizzie deserves the limelight; she passed away in 2005 but I feel in my heart that she would be so proud of her friend’s accomplishment.

If you’re interested, you can read other reader reviews of The Department of Lost & Found at Amazon.

Now it’s your turn … what did you think?

Remember this? I haven’t forgotten. It turned into the July/August Book Club Selection. I’ll review Allison Winn Scotch’s debut book tomorrow. Eventually I’ll choose a book for September (suggestions always welcome!).

I’m not sure what to make of this.

News is hitting the Internet about a safe (few side effects) and effective therapeutic vaccine (called Neuvenge) targeting her2/neu-positive breast cancer.

Therapeutic vaccines stimulate an immune response to existing disease — it’s not like this is going to prevent the damn disease from developing. But it seems to me this is a step in the right direction and the pharmaceutical company (Seattle-based Dendreon) should be given carte blanche to proceed with trials. Do you agree?

Comment on any 451 Press site during the month of August and you could win $300, $200 or $100.

Three comments will be chosen at random to win a cash prize at the end of the month. The more you comment the more chances you have to win.

There are links to the other 451 Press sites on this page, or comment away here at DBC.

Good luck!

Here’s an interesting statistic for you that has nothing to do with hormone replacement therapy:

“A woman born in the U.S. today still has a 12.7 percent chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime, according to the National Cancer Institute.”

Here’s another one:

“And women now in their 60s are nearly three times more likely to get breast cancer than women in their 40s, the institute said.”

Both of these were in the article I just read — the National Cancer Institute is a credible information source.

This is interesting … HRT and breast cancer are in the news again today.

The Seattle Times reported yesterday that “Researchers from Seattle and three other locations across the country say that their study of breast-cancer rates among more than 200,000 women — all of whom received regular mammograms — showed cancer rates fell significantly after U.S. women began abandoning menopausal hormone therapy about seven years ago.”

You know … I took birth control pills for years. Though there is no proof that my doing so had any causal effect on my body (my diagnoses), I can’t help but wonder if messing with my own body’s hormonal system didn’t have dire consequences.

What do you think? HRT and birth control pills working against us? Just hype and misplaced concern? Let me know.

No sooner did I try to reassure you all that I was back from vacation and getting in the saddle again — I drop off the face of the earth again.

I’m sorry.

Life … takes crazy turns. Been hectic. Mostly good. Some not so good. My health is fine though, rest assured.

Thanks for your patience (again).

I was on vacation last week with the family. I’ll post more later today but I wanted to let you know first thing this morning that I was back and haven’t forgotten you!