Day 251 - Mets

Today is National Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day, and social media has been blowing up about it all day.  Some people refer to metastases as "mets," hence today's post title.  As I have said before, metastatic breast cancer occurs when breast cancer spreads to vital organs (brain, lungs, liver, bones, skin), and is the only type of breast cancer that is deadly. No one knows why breast cancer metastasizes so no one knows how to prevent it from happening or really to treat it when it does.  Metastatic breast cancer patients receive chemo after chemo until each type stops working, and they run out of options.  Some live for years and years under these circumstances, but most die within 2-3 years.

This must change.  This MUST change.  Deaths from metastatic breast cancer should be considered a crisis by the medical community and by the government, and there are people working tirelessly to kick and scream so that metastatic breast cancer receives more attention and more funding.

Between 6-10% of breast cancer diagnoses are metastatic from the start, and approximately 30% of early stage breast cancer patients are later re-diagnosed as metastatic.  A metastatic re-diagnosis can happen quickly (within months) or can happen years (as many as 20) later.  Triple negative re-diagnoses generally happen sooner than hormone or Her2 positive breast cancer re-diagnoses, but someone with an initial triple negative diagnosis is unlikely to have a recurrence after the 5-year mark.

This is going to make me sound like a REAL downer (but cancer is a real downer), but early detection does not guarantee that one will not fall within the 30% who are re-diagnosed.  Someone who has an initial diagnosis of stage 0, 1, 2, or 3 (stage 3 is not usually considered to be early stage) can be part of the 30%. Kind of crazy, huh?

Many are likening the metastatic breast cancer crisis to the HIV crisis in the 1980s.  In the 1980s, a diagnosis of HIV was a death sentence.  No medications existed to effectively treat HIV.  Now, however, HIV can be treated as a chronic illness.  Yes, one must take medication for it, but it is no longer a guaranteed killer.

Can stage IV breast cancer be rendered into a chronic/manageable illness? Perhaps, but I think that it will be more difficult.  There are many types of breast cancer, and the medications that work on one type do not work on others, but there has got to be a way to make metastatic breast cancer survivable.  Ideally, it should be prevented entirely, but prevention does not help those who have already received a metastatic diagnosis.  They deserve more time with their loved ones.

I wrote this so that I can do my part to bring awareness to metastatic breast cancer because stage IV/metastatic/terminal breast cancer needs way more attention than it gets. Stave IV needs more!