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Living With Breast Cancer

  • Help for Neuropathy

    Posted 4/3/2013 by hhill
      If you don't know what "neuropathy" is, consider yourself lucky. It is nerve pain/numbness, usually in the hands and feet, that can be caused by a number of chemotherapy drugs. For women with breast cancer, the usual culprits are the taxanes: Taxol and Taxotere. Certainly, not every woman develops this side effect, but it can be very distressing and even disabling for those who do. Read more... Comments (0)

  • Nutrition Guidelines are Inconsistent

    Posted 3/31/2013 by hhill
    In a nutshell, here is what we know about nutrition and cancer: Not Much. If you Google nutrition/cancer or stand in a bookstore or look on Amazon, you will be rapidly overwhelmed by all the advice. The problem is that very little of it is based on sound research and much of it is contradictory and misleading. Since diet is something that we can contol, most of us wonder what we should or should not be eating. Will be make the cancer grow if I eat sugar? What about dairy? (I chose those two examples as it is easy to find, in the unproven press, prohibitions against those foods) Read more... Comments (0)

  • Easy Chemo

    Posted 3/2/2013 by hhill

      Very honestly, I walk a fine line here. I suspect that most readers (and I hope there are some! Did you see my plea yesterday to please write a comment?) are women who have early breast cancer, but I know that some have advanced/metastatic disease. I am very aware that women with advanced disease too often feel that the breast cancer community ignores them. Once you have moved into that world, it can seem that you are everyone's worst fear, and it is easier to pretend it can't happen.

      This is, therefore, a warning. Today's posting is an excerpt and then a link to the wonderful blog, But, Doctor, I hate pink, written by a woman who has Stage IV breast cancer. This is about so-called "easy" chemo which does seem to be an oxymoron. However, if you have the misfortune to become a chemo expert, to have the varied experiences that might entitle you to write the equivalent of a Zagat guide to breast cancer chemotherapies, you would know that some are much more difficult than others.

    Read more... Comments (0)

  • Kadcyla Approval

    Posted 2/28/2013 by hhill
      This is big news. It is especially important news for women who have her2positive breast cancer. Feeling somewhat like a broken record, let me repeat the reality that much/most research is directed at finding targeted treatments that are effective for specific kinds of cancer cells. The discovery of herceptin changed the whole world of treatment for women with her2 positive breast cancers. What had been a particularly lethal form of the disease became one that was at least as treatable as any other. Many, many women have benefitted from herceptin and have been treated, gone on to stay strong and healthy without a breast cancer recurrence. The FDA announced this week that another drug to treat her2 positive disease, Kadcyla, has been approved. Read more... Comments (0)

  • Oncotype DX and node positive breast cancer

    Posted 2/27/2013 by hhill
      Many of you are familiar with the Oncotype DX test, a genomic test that looks at groups of genes in breast cancer cells and predicts the odds of a recurrence. This test has been around since about 2005 and has been used for women who have a node negative, ER positive breast cancer and are trying to make a decision about chemotherapy. It has been very helpful in adding an important piece of information to this so difficult choice. Read more... Comments (0)

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About the Blogger

Hester Hill Schnipper, LICSW, OSW-C is the Manager of Oncology Social Work at BIDMC. For more than thirty years, her daily work at BIDMC has been primarily focused on supporting women with breast cancer. A nationally known writer and speaker, she was the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation's first Hatcher Survivorship Professor. In 1993, and again in 2005, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through the standard treatments of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and hormonal therapy. These experiences have given her great credibility with her patients and transformed her life's work to her life. Ms. Schnipper lives gratefully with her husband in an ancient farmhouse outside of Boston and spends as much time as possible in a water front cottage on Mt Desert Island. Between them, they have five adult children and seven grandchildren; she claims biological responsibility for two and three of them.

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