Around the Web

Here's what I found this week. Have something you'd like me to feature here? Please leave a note in the comments or send me an email.

Reducing the risk of recurrence in hormone-sensitive cancers

"A new treatment option is more effective than tamoxifen at preventing a return of breast cancer in young women, according to the results of two international trials."

Still requires shutting down ovaries, unfortunately.

And another promising option for post-menopausal breast cancer patients

"The inexpensive anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) reverses resistance to tamoxifen, a widely used breast cancer drug, in mice."

Anti-malarial? Really?

(Thanks to my friend Andrea for this one.)

At least one insurance company using incentive program to "reign in costs"

Would you want your doctor receiving financial incentives from an insurance company for how he or she prescribes the medicine you'll receive? Would you care? In an era of more and more individualized medicine, I'd be concerned the quality of care was at risk. But maybe that's just me?

(Thanks to my friend Andrea for this one, too.)

Decoding the role immune cells have on metastases

"Normally, macrophages -- chubby cells with a big mouth-like orifice -- are friends, not foe. They gobble up dead tumor cells and virtually any kind of debris, including infectious organisms. Picture the old Pac-Man video game that consumed dots.

But macrophages, Egeblad said, also send signals in the vast communication network of the body allowing cells to "talk" to each other.

"What we found is that when you give chemotherapy, the macrophages come in and clean up all these dead cells but they are also sending signals to the [tumor] cells that are not killed in the first round of chemo. And those signals are making it easier for the tumor to bounce back after chemo," she said."

I had no idea cells could be chubby.

Immunotherapy is all the rage lately

"A promising new study from Mayo Clinic, in conjunction with Caris Life Sciences, points to immunotherapy as a possible treatment option for patients with the difficult-to-treat triple negative breast cancer mutation."

I sat in on a Twitter chat (tweet chat?) earlier this week that focused on immunotherapy and where it is headed. Big things are happening, if you believe all the scientists. All of us patients are trying to temper our excitement with the reality that many of these amazing/brilliant/promising results are still in the very early trial stages. But I am staying tuned...

A friend's cousin and her beautiful love story

Worth the read AND the incredible photos taken by my friend Kristi's wildly talented sister Joy Marie.

Back to Earth

As we were driving the two hours north through the pouring rain from Duck Key to Miami on Monday morning, Quinn asked us where we were going. 

"We're going home," I said. "To our house in Phoenix."

"Oh," he responded. "We're going back to Earth?" 

I laughed, but it does feel like we landed with a thud squarely back on planet Earth Monday night. We woke up yesterday morning to a conversation with our contractor about replacing the chipped countertop in our new mother-in-law suite, to an empty refrigerator, to Quinn's jet-lag at 5:15 a.m., to ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN DEGREE TEMPERATURES. Way to welcome us home, Phoenix.

We were in the Keys for two of my best friends' wedding, a couple of people I've known since I was seventeen and we were all freshmen at Hopkins together. A couple who finally -- FINALLY -- realized they were more than best friends and finally -- FINALLY -- got engaged at my brother's house in Idaho last winter. So, this was also in part a college reunion, albeit in a locale a teensy bit prettier than Baltimore.

 

Chris and I got to have our first date night in months (months!), even if it meant paying exorbitant resort-priced babysitter fees. In my next life, I'm going to spend my twenties on an island making millions watching movies while other peoples' kids sleep upstairs. But it was worth it. We needed it.

And if we thought Quinn was a water baby before, this trip just solidified that notion. We could not get him out of the water for more than five minutes during the day -- not to eat more than a bite or two of food, not to take more than a sip of a virgin strawberry daiquiri, barely to go home to sleep at night. Our saving grace was that we were sharing a villa with another family whose two girls are just older and just younger than Quinn, and peer pressure to eat dinner/brush teeth/wash the sand out of your hair works wonders. The kid is stubborn. No idea where he gets that.

We're all having a rough time adjusting to being back on planet Earth, back from island time and planet Florida and time with some of the best people I know, these friends who've been my friends for nearly two decades and who I don't see often enough even when I see them at three out of four weddings in two months. Cancer has amplified this point: there never seems to be enough time.

Congratulations, Beth and Shanon. The weekend was as beautiful as you two are. As an added bonus, you finally -- FINALLY -- got Quinn to nap, he was so worn out yesterday. I owe you for that.

I May Have Found the Antidote to Chemo's Side Effects

When I showed up for chemo this morning, I still had a slight headache from this weekend. I drank too much wine on Saturday, yes (enough that our group landed at a Waffle House at one in the morning to nosh on cheese-smothered hash browns; alas, they did not prevent our hangovers as much as we had hoped), but I also cried a lot and was sleep-deprived from the outset of the weekend. I had taken the redeye to North Carolina to watch one of my best friends, Leslie, get married. As it turns out, I cannot recover from overnight flights or red wine like I used to.

There is nothing like a weekend of indulgence in fried chicken and pulled pork nachos and staying up too late (and maybe one shot of bourbon) to set you up for a successful round of chemo. Ahem.

I should note: this is a fairly rare thing for me, to drink excessively anymore. I know it's not recommended. I know moderation is what's best for staving off breast cancer (although I'm honestly not sure if they've studied it for cases of advanced disease like mine). I know my liver is doing lots of work as it is. I know, I know, I know. These reasons are why I am typically a one-glass-with-dinner-once-in-awhile type of girl. But it was a wedding.

I had a dear friend's marriage and a clean scan to celebrate. And then I had chemo this morning. Next week I might be on a juice cleanse, no joke.

I've mentioned before how wonderful my friends are. The wedding this weekend was between one of my friends who'd cut off her hair for me and a man she met while working in Jordan. Leslie and Bill are the type of people who make you want to be a better person, and I don't say that lightly. They have devoted their lives to helping others and to service in a way I can't say of too many people. Their collective resume (which I'm sure they don't have, but if they did) includes the AmeriCorps, U.S. Agency for International Development, the Army, nursing school, jumping out of airplanes, traveling the world, and just generally making it a better, safer, healthier place to live.

Leslie and her new husband are downright incredible people, so I shouldn't have been surprised at the gesture they made at their wedding, the gift they gave me and so many others. I had already been crying at the mother/son and father/daughter dances because let's face it. I am a sap.

And then Leslie announced that in lieu of gifts, they'd asked for guests to donate to a couple of charities close to their hearts, and that they would also be making contributions to The Special Operations Warrior Foundation and Play for Pink, which donates 100% of its funds to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. I knew they'd been planning this, and it still caught me off-guard, still had me bawling into my napkin and hoping the wedding photographer wasn't getting that particular moment on camera. I'm not exaggerating when I say my friends (and family, too) are helping to save my life.

My heart is so filled with love after this weekend that it will be the thing that gets me through the chemo side effects this week. It will be my antidote. And then I'll do that juice cleanse.