This is a firsthand account, as part of SWHR’s Women’s Health Perspective series. This story was facilitated by the Cancer Vaccine Coalition.
My birthday was a hard one this year. Not because there were 52 candles on the cake – I welcome each of those beautiful flames! For me, though, September 1 has become synonymous with breast cancer.
It was five years ago, on my 47th birthday, that I saw a dent on my breast and knew something was wrong. Luckily, at the time, I remembered a story I did for NBC Nightly News in 2016 about a study showing that one in six women doesn’t present with a classic “lump” for breast cancer. It was not the little marble I had felt in the fake breast in high school health class, but for my body, I knew it was something new and different. It was that simple realization that may have saved my life.
I’m so grateful I got it checked out. I hate to think how much worse my prognosis would have been had I not known my body and trusted my instinct that something was off, even though I had a clear mammogram just 4 months before I found the dent.
I know being five years past diagnosis is supposed to make me feel better. I am one of the lucky ones. I am alive. I’m back to many of the activities I enjoyed pre-cancer, but my birthday always makes me reflect on how truly different I am now. It breaks my heart that my now 8-year-old will probably never remember “pre-cancer Mommy,” without the scars etched across my body and mind. While I always tried to make the most of every day before my diagnosis, now I am perpetually aware of my mortality. Fear is my constant companion. Are there errant cancer cells floating through me, just waiting to return? I’ve seen enough recurrence in our breast cancer community to know it is quite possible. It’s why I am so motivated by the work I see happening to develop cancer vaccines and the reason I left my great job as a correspondent for NBC news and founded the CANCER VACCINE COALITION (CVC) earlier this year..
Leaving NBC News to try to cure cancer may sound like a crazy thing to do. I’m a journalist, not an oncologist, but once I met the brilliant scientists working on vaccines, I couldn’t help but bring my skills to the fight that could change cancer care for all of us. The strides being made right now in women’s health research inspire me every day, and I had to be a part of it. We need to stop the cycle where 1 in 8 of us will get breast cancer. How many of those women do you know? We’ve normalized breast cancer so much that a friend’s diagnosis no longer shocks us, but for me the reality of life after a cancer diagnosis was quite shocking. Five years later, I am far from the person I was. . I am constantly aware of my reconstructed chest. My breasts are completely numb, yet I can feel the heaviness of the implants. A failed DIEP flap left me scarred from hip to hip and like my chest, the skin on my stomach cannot feel a touch.I am trapped in a body that no longer feels like my own. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to be alive, but why can’t we expect better than that?
Vaccines present a powerful place to start. With cancer vaccines, our own bodies could learn to continue to protect us from many cancer risks and may eventually learn to fight off cancer completely. In the UK, they are already giving out 10,000 cancer vaccines as part of a massive national push to lead the world on this promising science; these are vaccines for a wide range of cancers, including pancreatic, lung, colorectal, glioblastoma, and melanoma. The World Economic Forum calls it an “Historic Leap in Cancer Vaccines.”
In the U.S. the science is also advancing. Several vaccines are in Phase two clinical trials having already proved they are safe with minimal side effects. This fall, CVC will help fund a second site for the trial of University of Washington’s STEMVAC vaccine as a therapy for metastatic triple negative breast cancer, one of the most aggressive breast cancer subtypes.. CVC is also working with scientists from The Cleveland Clinic and University of Pennsylvania where BRCA+ patients being treated could one day see a vaccine as part of their preventative care plan. CVC is also joined by scientists out of MD Anderson, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Roswell Park and Dana Farber. By coming together with CVC, the researchers hope to advance this science that has the potential to save or improve hundreds of thousands of lives.
Imagine a day when breast cancer is no longer a fatal disease, when your sisters, mothers, friends and daughters don’t have to live in fear that they will be the one in eight. It’s possible. While my days may be tinged with fear of recurrence, this possibility means they are also filled with hope. I try my best to hold on to the latter.
When I was diagnosed five years ago, I asked that age old question “Why me?” The answer of course is “Why not me?” and that is how I now choose to frame my role in finding a cure.
Why not me? Why not any of us?
We all have so much to gain by supporting the science, and, together, I know we can do this.
Learn more about the CANCER VACCINE COALITION online.
To submit your own story, visit SWHR’s Share Your Story portal, part of SWHR’s Women’s Health Perspective series.