Articles

Breast Cancer Awareness Month Over, but Consciousness Should Continue

By Durrell Dawson
Chicago Flame  - Opinions
Issue: 11/04/03

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending a weekend in Baltimore, Maryland with Pat and Ronald Fisher.

The Fishers are a nice couple that enjoys attending Baltimore Ravens football games, among other perks that come along with retired life.

I had a great time in Baltimore and was introduced to several members of their family. Unfortunately, I was unable to meet their daughter Allison because at age 28 she lost her life to breast cancer.

According to the American Cancer Society, 96 percent of breast cancer related deaths during 1996 to 2000 occurred in women over the age of 40, but for an unlucky few like Allison, diagnosis of the cancer can terminate life before it has the chance to fully begin.

Allison was a masters of business administration candidate in entertainment management at the University of California Los Angeles when breast cancer took its toll on her.

Although she was undergoing radiation treatments, she continued to pursue her degree and live her life, until she finally succumbed to the cancer five years ago.

In tribute to their daughter, the Fishers created a scholarship fund in Allison's name to raise awareness of breast cancer among young women.  Because breast cancer isn't as common in young women as in older women, doctors often underplay the symptoms reported by their younger patients, giving the cancer time to spread.

It may seem silly to worry over something that doesn't affect many women until later in life, but it is important for all college aged women to check their breasts for lumps at least once a month.

If detected early enough, death as the result of breast cancer can be prevented.  So why not sacrifice a few minutes each month to make sure nothing is abnormal?

The National Cancer Institute estimated that about one in eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. Those numbers are exceptionally high, which is why it is important for women to get a yearly breast examination by their doctor in addition to the monthly self-exam.

I know it seems weird for me, a guy, to devote an entire column to telling female college students to practically fondle their breasts, but my weekend with the Fisher family was eye opening.

I rarely hear about people my age dying from anything other than accidents and violence. To know that so many women are likely to be affected by this form of cancer is unsettling. My mother, your sister and your best friend's great aunt Sally are all at risk from breast cancer just because they happen to be women.

Do me a favor and make sure all of the women in your life are doing everything they can to detect breast cancer early.  I hope no one has to go through the ordeal that Allison faced when she juggled school with chemotherapy.

If you are a female, please make sure you do a monthly breast self-exam and have your breasts checked annually by a doctor.  If you feel weird about examining yourself, I'll support your cause and give myself a breast exam every month as well.

Since I am a guy, I am 100 times less likely to get breast cancer than the average woman, but I will go out on a limb and check for lumps if at least one woman makes it a habit to do the same.

Did I mention that October was National Breast Cancer Awareness Month? Now that it's a new month, let's make sure no more women have to suffer from this cancer, especially when early detection can reduce the harm done.

By Patricia Meisol
Sun Staff
Originally Published October 2, 2003

First, you'll want to know Deb Mendelson, because she's the one who pulled everybody together. The ring leader of a new group that's fielding a team in Saturday's Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

A single mother of two small boys, she has a lilting Southern accent - she's from central Virginia - and nonstop energy. Her latest news: She's engaged to be married. Nearly from the day she was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago at age 32, she's been out searching for other young women in her situation.

Next there's Jeannine Abbinanti, 31; she moved to Baltimore for a job with Southwest Airlines a week after her last cancer treatment in 1999. She's moved ahead, though cancer remains a part of who she is. She was trying to figure out how to tell the nice guy she's dating that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer when he told her she'd given it away already: pictures of herself with no hair in her Pasadena apartment and a cat named Chemo.

There are five women altogether. All talkers. All doers. Two were new to Baltimore when they were diagnosed with breast cancer but had made friends enough already to help them during treatment. They were destined to find each other - seeking, as they were, others who understood something about living with breast cancer at ages so young some had yet to consider starting a family when they faced the possibility they might not be able to.

They are the brains behind a new group to make it easier for young women down the line.

Tonight they and other under-40 survivors will rally at Charm City Runners in Timonium, the team's sponsor, to pick up team packets and peruse new gear for the cause.

In a way, Saturday is payback time. The annual race, a tribute to breast cancer survivors, raises money to help more women in Maryland be tested for breast cancer, to educate them, to pay for mammograms for those without insurance and to alert women to medical research projects that could benefit them. Some of the money (25 percent) goes outside the state for national research efforts, and last year, some of the money paid for these five women to attend the third annual convention in Philadelphia of the Young Survival Coalition, a fledgling national group aimed at helping young women. So far, 85 women have joined the Maryland affiliate, which is being organized as a nonprofit. Their team Saturday has 73 people.

Of the 200,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer annually, only 11,000 are under 40. What Deb Mendelson discovered was that the issues she faced - fertility, early menopause and caring for small children - were different from those faced by older women. It was after a yoga class at a wellness center one day that she decided to do something. She was the youngest one by far in the class and felt so out of place she never went back. A nurse at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Barbara Raksin, who is also a member of the Komen board of directors, told her about the Young Survival Coalition and went with her to its second national convention.

It took Mendelson one year to find four other people who wanted to organize a Maryland group and, like her, each woman was already trying to spread the word.

All but one had been twentysomething or thirtysomething when she felt a lump in her breast and went to the doctor. Pat Fisher, 57, is the exception in the group. She and her husband, Ronald Fisher Sr, raise money for an annual scholarship in honor of their daughter, Allison E. Fisher, a television broadcaster who died from breast cancer five years ago at 28.

"I'm the mother hen," she says.

Fisher says her daughter, a Perry Hall High School honors graduate who earned a broadcast degree from American University, insisted on staying in California throughout her illness. The guy Allison was dating left her when he learned she had breast cancer - not an issue for her mother when she got the disease herself 12 years ago. Though Allison Fisher had friends and even surrogate parents, thanks to connections her mother made by volunteering at the Baltimore County Public Library, the young woman complained to her parents that she had no one her age to speak with. That led the Fishers to start the scholarship to bring awareness of the disease to young people. Pat Fisher was looking for links to the Web site on her daughter when she discovered the Young Survival Coalition and Deb Mendelson. "It was a perfect fit for us," Fisher says.

"We want healthy women to be aware of the risk," she says, "and also we want young women to be more active - when they find a lump, don't let doctors dismiss it."

Getting the word out

When Judy D'Avanzo, 36, got sick two years ago, the athlete and former Lynn Brick aerobics instructor teamed up with the American Cancer Society to put on a walking event. She'd never done it before, and the more events she became involved in, the more she realized everyone else was older. "They were talking about seeing their grandchildren grow up and I was wondering if I can have another baby," she says.

A stepsister in New York City who is a founding member of the Young Survival Coalition told her about the group, she says, "but I didn't have anybody my age until I put on an event to raise money and Deb was there."

The event she staged last year was Yoga for the Cure. She advertised it on television, by word of mouth and with fliers. "My goal is to give other young women a positive outlook on this disease - and a venting place," she says.

D'Avanzo, who works part-time for the Baltimore County health department, was diagnosed two weeks before her daughter's first birthday. Two years later, she talks about the difference in how people react to pregnancy and cancer. "When you are pregnant everybody wants to talk about it. When you have cancer, no one wants to talk about it. We women bond by talking. I want to give them a place to do it."

Her next event is a talk aimed at helping people relax and rejoice.

The group's goal, though, is primarily educational.

Road to remission

Another member, Dana Robinson, 33, of Lanham, has been telling her story on the lecture circuit since her diagnosis two years ago.

"For me, it is very important to go out and speak to young women," she says, "I don't want anybody else to be in my shoes."

Like many young women with breast cancer, she found a lump in her breast herself and went to the doctor. She has no family history of the disease, and her doctor assumed it was fibroid adenoma, a benign tumor more common in the African-American community, and told her not to worry. She didn't know anybody her age with breast cancer, she says, so she listened. Now she knows the lump should have been tested for cancer. The lump grew, and when it was taken out almost a year later at her insistence, it proved cancerous and the disease had spread to her lymph nodes. That same week her marriage fell apart. Friends, co-workers, her mother and sisters helped with her two sons, then 2 and 10, while she continued to work in the information office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Searching for people her own age to talk to, Robinson found an online "Sisters in Survivorship" chat room set up by Baltimore women. There, Robinson met people all over the country, including Mendelson.

Abbinanti, the Southwest employee, met Mendelson at a young cancer survivors group in Columbia called the Ulman Cancer Fund. It was for people with all types of cancer. Her treatment is long over, and this fall she stops taking medicines that prevent recurrence of the disease and shut down her ovaries, at least temporarily. She is hoping to get pregnant eventually, so long as her body doesn't go into early menopause. "So, you're under the gun. You have to take this medicine but" there's a risk.

For her, being a member of Young Survival Coalition is an opportunity to show other women that in a couple of years, they can be where she is today.

Abbinanti says her boyfriend goes with her to doctors' appointments, and they talk about their future, but when she started dating again four years ago, it was hard. "You didn't want to be rejected for it," she says, "and you wanted the person to love you for who you are, not because you are a breast cancer survivor. What I found was to be honest about it."

Deb Mendelson's journey to meet these women began when she volunteered for the Komen golf tournament while going through chemotherapy. Her hair hadn't fallen out yet when she attended her first conference of the Young Survival Coalition.

Now she is renewing her license as a nurse to work with young women diagnosed with breast cancer.

Her goal is awareness. "We just want to say to women, do your self-exams. Know the statistics." Meanwhile, she's busy volunteering for Komen. Last year she finished the Race for the Cure in under 32 minutes. She expects to beat that Saturday.

For more information about the national group for young survivors of breast cancer, visit www.youngsurvival.org.

Health Story January W. Payne 11/18/2002

When Patricia and Ronald Fisher Sr. lost their 28-year-old daughter Allison to breast cancer in 1998, they made it their mission to increase awareness of the disease and to fight for a cure.

Through the organization they established in their daughter’s name, the Allison E. Fisher Memorial Fund, they hold two fundraising dinners annually—one in their hometown of Baltimore and the other in Los Angeles—to celebrate Allison’s life and to raise money for scholarships the Fishers award yearly.

The Fishers, like many other families across the country, know from experience how devastating breast cancer can be. Although Allison, who the Fishers call their “angel on a jazz note,” died from her bout with the disease, Patricia Fisher is a breast cancer survivor. The memorial fund aids them in keeping Allison’s memory alive.

“Allison was the sunshine and the gentle rain,” the Fishers said on the fund’s Web site. “She touched everyone.”

The National Cancer Institute estimates that one in eight women in the United States will develop breast cancer during her lifetime, based on cancer occurrences from 1997 through 1999.

The Institute’s data also breaks down the risk for being diagnosed with breast cancer in different age groups. The odds increase significantly as women age—going from a one in 252 chance in the 30 to 40 age group, to a one in 27 chance in the 60 to 70 age group.

The average age for breast cancer diagnosis is 64, according to the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations’ Web site. NABCO advises women to begin getting yearly mammograms at age 40, or earlier if they have a family history of breast cancer.

There is no known cure or method for prevention of breast cancer. Doctors recommend that women do monthly self-exams.

“Women can protect their health through early detection and by seeking prompt medical treatment for any symptoms such as breast lumps,” the NABCO’s Web site said. “Learning about breast cancer and following an early detection program are two very important steps to take in protecting your health.”

NABCO recommends a three-step early detection process: monthly self-exams, annual mammograms and yearly breast exams given by your doctor or nurse.

A 1997 American Cancer Society survey showed that Maryland women were more likely to have mammograms than women nationally. About 87.8 percent of Maryland women age 40 and over said they had at least one mammogram in their lifetimes, compared to 84.4 percent of women in the same age group nationwide.

In the same survey, about 78.4 percent of Maryland women ages 40 to 49 said they had mammograms in the previous two years, which is 13.9 points higher than the total number of women nationwide who said they had mammograms in the same time period.

Although Allison Fisher was not in a high-risk age group for breast cancer, her family history and young age may have put her at a disadvantage in the odds for overcoming the disease, according to the results of a National Breast Cancer Centre study.

“Women with breast cancer younger than 35 years of age have a greater risk of relapse and death than older premenopausal women,” the Centre’s researchers wrote in the study’s conclusion.