Battling Cancer

The July 10th issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology reported that survival rates for breast cancer decreased with increased BMI or body mass index. Women with higher BMI showed a 52 percent increase in mortality rates compared to women with the lowest BMI.

Source: Reuters

Read the full article here.

What exactly is BMI?

Per the Centers for Disease Control:

“Body Mass Index (BMI) is a number calculated from a person’s weight and height. BMI is a reliable indicator of body fatness for people. Additionally, BMI is an inexpensive and easy-to-perform method of screening for weight categories that may lead to health problems.

BMI is used as a screening tool to identify possible weight problems for adults. However, BMI is not a diagnostic tool. For example, a person may have a high BMI. However, to determine if excess weight is a health risk, a healthcare provider would need to perform further assessments. These assessments might include skinfold thickness measurements, evaluations of diet, physical activity, family history,”

Use the CDC easy Adult BMI Calculator

or the Mayo Clinic BMI Calculator

What’s Next?

Talk to your health care provider about a lifestyle plan which includes healthy eating and exercise.

Check out the CDC’s Healthy Weight Plan site.

Get active, get healthy, your life depends on it.

More →

Male Breast Cancer comprises 1% of all diagnosed cases of breast cancer.

More →

Friday I’ll be giving away three books donated to the site by gracious authors, publicists and/or donors. All that is necessary for a chance to win, is to post a comment with a way to reach you. Winners will be chosen by random.

1. If Only In My Dreams by Wendy Markham. Best selling author, Wendy Markham a.k.a. New York Times best selling author, Wendy Corsi Staub is a busy writer, not only does she write women’s fiction as Wendy Markham, but she writes bestselling mystery/thrillers as Wendy Corsi Staub. Along with her young adult books she is releasing a new young adult paranormal series set in the Lily Dale spiritualist community of southern Western New York.

From Booklist. “Clara McCallum finally gets her big break as an actress when she’s cast as the romantic lead in a World War II-era epic, but the good news is accompanied by a frightening diagnosis of breast cancer. Though her doctor tells her it’s treatable, Clara can’t bring herself to tell those close to her and instead opts to go forth with filming. Her decision has unforeseen consequences when she boards a train for the set and ends up in New York in 1941 and meets the real-life Jed Landry, the soldier her character falls in love with in the movie. When Clara finds herself falling for Jed in the past, she’s torn between saving his life and returning to the future to undergo treatments to save her own. ”

From Publisher’s Weekly. “The fantastic setup is balanced with convincing period details and strong characters, and the story’s conclusion is unexpectedly real and refreshing. ”

More →

About 1 in 12 women will contract breast cancer some time during their life, with the odds increasing as they age. But with modern medicine, treatment can be relatively simple and effective. Key to that success, though, is early detection. A regular mammogram is one traditional and still highly useful tool to do so.

A mammogram is a simple x-ray photograph of the breast area. The plates are then examined by a radiologist, who is trained to look at the subtle differences in the picture for indications of tumors. It is an important part of the regime to distinguish between benign cysts and cancerous growths.

More →

Today’s guest commentary is by Amanda, a cancer research scientist, on the high cost of anti-cancer drugs.

Can you put a price on life? What a complex and interesting question, and one that I have never really thought much of before. But this is the question that many cancer patients face when considering the coming months of costly treatment options after their initial diagnosis.

While many insurance companies cover a percentage of the drug treatment costs, the price of new cutting-edge treatments are astronomical. For example, herceptin is a drug that prescribed to women who have breast cancers that overexpress a receptor called HER2. This type of cancer is very aggressive, and tends to grow and spread more quickly than HER2-negative tumors. Treatment with herceptin is the only option for women having this type of cancer. However, the drug is by no means cheap. Months of treatment can reach $25,000-$50,000 a year. The approximate cost of a three week infusion of herceptin is about $5,000. If the insurance company covers 70% of the cost, you will still be left with $1,500 that is not covered.

This figure only takes into account type of treatment. Depending on the type of cancer, combinational therapy may be the only option for patient survival, with two to three different types of drugs that the patient must pay for or face certain death. After a few months, this adds up, and most working class families cannot afford it. And the question once again returns: can you put a price on life?

Why are these treatments so expensive? More →

I just recently came across a really great blog this week called Discussing Breast Cancer. Written by two-time breast cancer survivor Karen Lynch, it’s a funny, poignant, and honest look at living through the diagnosis. Here’s a few of my favorite posts from the last couple of weeks:

Cancer Doesn’t Wait until after the Holidays, Part I of III
First in a series of practical advice for cancer patients on why it may be advisable to “reframe” during the holidays.

More →

I’m still stuck here on the couch sick, but I’ve got great news – because she had such a great time guest posting for me last week, Amanda is back to Battling Cancer for another essay.  Having worked directly across her benchtop space for years, I’ve always told her that she’s got way too much personality for her stodgy lab environment.  Maybe I can talk her into joining the ranks of bloggers who actually are encouraged to have a good time on the job!  At the very least, be expecting her and her unique views as a regular contributor for the new content makeover that we’ll be rolling out soon.

I am one of the lucky persons out there who absolutely adores her mother. She is not only my mother, she is my best friend and the one that I turn to when life is just crumbling around me. About 10 years ago, my mom had to have a hysterectomy to correct some problems associated with the birth of my sister (she was messing things up even way back then [Ed. note -- just kidding!]). I didn’t really give it much thought until my grandmother developed breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy. To me, it is a no-brainer. Cancer in boob, get rid of boob. End of cancer = happy me.

The surgery was extremely upsetting to my mom, though. She swore to me that if she developed breast cancer, she would not get a mastectomy, no matter what the prognosis was. She said that if she were to lose her breasts, too, there would be no parts of her left that made her a woman. Naturally, I sat there in shock. How could my mom not opt to save her life? They are just breasts! You can survive without breasts! In this day and age, they can replace them, and make them perkier to boot. I even offered to go through the procedure with her. I would gladly give up both my breasts to save my mom. No matter how much I argued, she would not back down, and to this day maintains that in the event of cancer, she will proceed without the mastectomy, even if it means certain death. I cannot comprehend how anyone would take this kind of gamble with their life, but the ultimate choice is hers, and I have to respect that. More →

Moving from a state inhabited by less than 2 million people to a city that’s home to more than twice those numbers is quite a shock, and little drives that point home more for me than the news.  Since I’ve spent the last few days parked on the couch with my laptop (I’ve got strep throat — it’s my right to stay in my pajamas all day), I’ve seen video footage of arson, murder, suicide, a hostage crisis at the mall, and a building collapsing in on itself.  It can be downright numbing to see all those bad vibes. 

But today, I just heard the most uplifting news from that little clinic down the road:  University of Texas-MD Anderson breast cancer patient Linda Sanchez gave birth to healthy baby Isabella Marie last night after having been in chemotherapy while pregnant.

More →

Hi there, readers! Since I’ll be on the road travelling for the next two days, I asked Amanda Devereaux, one of my former bosses and best friends, to step in for me for the following guest post.   Amanda, who is blessed with both beauty and brains, has a Ph.D. in Microbiology and is currently working in a cancer research laboratory.  I’m sure you’ll find her opinions as entertaining as I do!

If any of you reading this are like me, there are two words that should never be spoken in the same sentence:  acupuncture (Aka: sharp, steel needles) and breast (soft, nerve-filled mammary tissue that hurts when poked with a sharp, steel needle).  I guess the British have a different approach on how to get their kicks than I do.  Different strokes for different folks, as the saying goes. 

More →

After finishing off an entire bag of tortilla chips and nacho cheese, I sat down at my computer to read through this week’s latest news in cancer. Coincidentally, the first article that I came across was about a recent study correlating weight gain and the increased risk of developing postmenopausal breast cancer.

In a report published in the October 22 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers have found a positive link between increased weight and the development of breast cancer in women who did not take hormone therapy after menopause. The conclusions were drawn from a pool of 99,039 postmenopausal women who participated in a joint study between the National Institutes of Health and the American Association of Retired Persons.  Participants in the study reported their current body weight and age, as well as their weights at their ages of 18, 35, and 50. All of this data was then used to make comparisons between age, weight, and the development of breast cancer.

At this point, I took away from this article two things:

More →