In 2008, I had everything going for me: a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the University of Virginia School of Medicine, I had a busy and successful ob-gyn practice in South Lake Tahoe, CA; a precocious 9 year old daughter; and a well-used passport from traveling all over the world with my family to attend conferences, with a liberal dose of vacation on the side. When I was diagnosed with stage IIB breast cancer in April 2008, I considered it a mere bump in the road, returning to work two weeks after my bilateral mastectomy and continuing to work all through the four months of chemo.
And for five years, breast cancer was an aside, something to put in the past medical history section of forms. Even when I developed sudden back pain, I never thought it could be breast cancer rearing its ugly head – a pulled muscle, a herniated disc but not what it turned out to be: metastatic breast cancer in virtually every bone in my body, with a fractured vertebra and an about to break left femur. I was diagnosed on my 53rd birthday.
I have been extremely lucky, for after an unconventional 14-month course of combination IV chemo and zometa, followed by a more conventional aromatase inhibitor, I have remained NEAD – No Evidence of Active Disease — since April 2014. Neuropathy from the chemo did cost me my career, but I have found a new purpose in advocacy. I am a volunteer and grant reviewer for METAvivor; a member of the Metastatic Breast Cancer Alliance and the ABC Global Alliance; a consumer reviewer for the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program; and past medical director of METUP. I will fight for more research funding for the already metastasized patient until my dying breath by continuing to contact my state and federal representatives and participating in legislative advocacy days on Capitol Hill, as I have since 2015.
I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a doctor, a woman LIVING with metastatic breast cancer. I am an advocate.
