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Living With Breast Cancer

  • Targeted Therapies and Breast Cancer

    Posted 5/24/2013 by hhill
      All of us have heard the buzz around "targeted therapies", and most of it is good. The simplistic definition is that these are molecular agents that are designed to attack a particular part of a breast (or other) cancer cell. Rather than trying to kill the whole cell all at once, as does chemotherapy, a targeted therapy uses stealth to depower or kill or otherwise ruin a single tiny part that then makes the whole cell inoperable--or dead. Think of tamoxifen (perhaps the first targeted therapy although it wasn't called that) and ER positive breast cancers or, more recently, herceptin and her2 positive ones. Read more... Comments (0)

  • Alcohol and Survival

    Posted 4/11/2013 by hhill
      This is excellent news for those of us who really enjoy a cocktail in the evening or a glass of wine with dinner. If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know this is a recurring topic, and it is often to share another study that suggests even moderate alcohol intake may increase breast cancer risk or recurrence risk. This newest study from Journal of Clinical Oncology suggests the opposite: that moderate drinking may not impact whether or not one survives breast cancer and might even increase your odds. Read more... Comments (0)

  • Five Year Survival Rates

    Posted 4/4/2013 by hhill
      In a way, this is a companion piece to my recent blog on the use (or not) of the word "cure" in Cancer World. In Breast Cancer World, five year survival rates are misleading, often misused, and not so important. As I have said before, each year that you stay healthy, the odds of remaining healthy increase. But three years or five years or even ten years have no special magic for women who have had breast cancer. Research and statistics have to be organized in some way, and the standard format is five and ten years. 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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