fighting cancer....and losing

Okay, what could possibly prompt me to post a second time within an hour? The new issue of Newsweek, that's what. It's the one with Sarah Palin on the cover (although what magazine DOESN'T have Palin on the cover this week? you go, girl). But it also has an article entitled We Fought Cancer......And Cancer Won inside. And as I read that, something akin to relief flooded my veins. Because I thought, finally - an honest article that isn't sugarcoated and whitewashed and falsely optimistic. There is a quote in the article by Boston oncologist and cancer survivor Therese Mulvey - "The metaphor of fighting cancer implies the possibility of winning. But some people are just not going to be cured. We've made tremendous strides against some cancers, but on others we're stuck, and even our successes buy some people only a little more time before they die of cancer anyway......With cancer, sometimes death is not optional." And though some might call her pessimistic, I agree with her that the stories of how breast cancer rates have fallen and colonoscopy and fecal occult blood testing have reduced colon cancer allow a false sense of optimism or safety to occur. Cancer still will kill 565, 650 people in the United States this year. That's more than 1,500 people a day. When you read stuff like that, we're still nowhere where we need to be. But, like Otis Brawley of the ACS has said, "One tumor is smarter than 100 brilliant cancer scientists." Harold Varmus, the president of MSKCC, has even said that cancer "...is commonly viewed, as, at best, minimally controlled by modern medicine, especially when compared with other major diseases." Progress among cancers is uneven, and mortality rates vary widely. The old thinking that 5 years of remission means cure is just not true. Breast cancer is known to recur 10, 15, 20 years later. Childhood cancer treatments can cause later malignancies. Micrometastases can show up years later. 

This is what we fight every day. When I dwell on it, the task to figure anything out seems insurmountable. It's kind of depressing. But then I think about my summer at MSKCC, and how NO ONE seemed beaten down or discouraged there. The brainpower and the passion there were invigorating. And it reminds me that this is my goal, this is my chosen field. I can do this. We can do this. 

The only thing that annoys me in the magazine is that Stand Up 2 Cancer has taken out ads on like, every other page practically. In the middle of the article is a 5-6 page advertisement for it. I'm sick of hearing about this. Yeah, it's great, you're raising money, thanks. But I just find it overproduced and glossy and -- dare I say -- misguided. At this point, it's NOT ABOUT THE CURE. It's about survival, and living with cancer. This is a much more realistic way of looking at it. By focusing on cure I feel like you're leaving out a huge chunk of the population. 

Anyway, I'll step down off my soapbox now.