Random Thoughts ~ Sunday October 1, 2011

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Why is it so hard to talk about the morbidly large Pink Elephant in the room?

Why is it so hard to take ownership that it's there? That it exists whether we acknowledge it or not?

Is it because we think that if we ignore it it will eventually ebb away, like a bad hangover?

Every moment changes.

Time is not static.

We feed this mindset with platitudes of reassurance that "this too will pass"; "time heals all"; "keep looking forward"; "hakuna matata".

But such prosaic statements work no magic on a Pink Elephant.

So we keep quiet.

And there it sits, large.

Grotesque.

Is it hard to speak out loud, not because we are afraid of what the Pink Elephant might say; but rather, because we are afraid that once it starts speaking we will never get it to shut up?

Such it would seem is the nature of metastatic breast cancer.

Enriching the Vocab

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Axillary lymph nodes glands in the armpit that fight harmful invaders such as bacteria. The presence of breast cancer cells in these lymph nodes generally indicates that cancer is more likely to spread elsewhere in the body.

Axillary lymph node dissection Surgical removal of lymph nodes in the armpit area

Invasive cancer Cancers that are capable of going beyond their site of origin and invading neighboring tissue

Lymph nodes Glands found throughout the body that fight harmful invaders such as bacteria. The presence of cancer cells in lymph nodes adjacent to a primary tumor generally indicates that cancer is more likely to spread elsewhere in the body.

Lymphedema Swelling of arm that can follow axillary node removal as part of breast cancer surgery. It can be temporary or permanent and occur immediately or any time after.

Metastasis Spread of cancer to an organ beyond the location in which it originated

Radiation therapy Treatment with high-energy rays (X-rays) to kill cancer cells

The Pink Elephant

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Living with a chronic disease...be it cancer, leukemia, diabetes, MS...is like living with the proverbial "Pink Elephant" in the room. Everyone knows it is there. Everyone sees and feels its oppressive, offensive, and uninvited presence. Yet, no one wants to call it by name. Everyone steps gingerly around its massive bulk. All those in close proximity hold their respective noses when they get too close. When it eventually takes the dreaded, but anticipated, crap on the carpet, the response is to tie a putrid pink little ribbon around it to make everyone aware that it there.

PSA - Alcohol & Breast Cancer Recurrence

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Alcohol Raises Risk of Breast Cancer Recurrence

Study Shows Drinking More Than 3 Drinks a Week Is Linked to Return of Cancer

By Charlene Laino / Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Dec. 10, 2009 (San Antonio) -- If you've been diagnosed with breast cancer, you may want to cut down on alcoholic beverages.

That's the suggestion of researchers who found that cancer is 34% more likely to come back in breast cancer survivors who drink more than three drinks a week, compared with those who abstain or drink less.

Drinking more than three drinks a week also raised the risk of dying from breast cancer by 51%, says Marilyn L. Kwan, PhD, a staff scientist at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif.

"Women with breast cancer who are postmenopausal or overweight seem to be most susceptible to the effects of alcohol." The findings were presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Previous research has linked alcohol to an increased risk of developing breast cancer, but little is known about alcohol's effect on women who have already been diagnosed with the disease.

So Kwan and colleagues followed 1,897 women who had been successfully treated for early-stage breast cancer between 1997 and 2000. About a year after diagnosis, they were asked whether they drank alcohol, how much they drank, and their drink of choice.

Over the next eight years, 349 of the women suffered a recurrence of their breast cancer, and 332 died of the disease.

"We don't think the type of alcohol mattered, but it was difficult to examine since 90% of the women in our study drank wine," Kwan says. But how much they drank did matter; women who indulged in two or more glasses of wine per day were most likely to suffer a recurrence, she says.

It makes sense that alcohol would raise both the risk of developing breast cancer and the chance that it will come back, Kwan says. "Alcohol increases levels of estrogen in the body, and breast cancer is fueled by estrogen."

Jeffrey Peppercorn, MD, a breast cancer specialist at Duke University, states that women who are diagnosed with breast cancer often want to know what they can do to lower their risk of recurrence.

"Limiting alcohol consumption is one step they can take," he says. "I tell women we're not sure that any amount of alcohol is safe ... but that it would be prudent to limit consumption except on rare, special occasions."

TC Post Script: Over the last 25 years (i.e., post undergrad studies), my alcohol consumption has been limited to the occassional Cosmo and 1.5 glasses of red wine on a Friday or Saturday night. (Yeah...PARTY ANIMAL!!!) I have also maintained a consistent body weight of 100-104 lbs (except during pregnancies). So...for me, more information on the unknown.