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According to the Ladies' Home Journal writer Susan Crandall, (May 2010), my friend, Virginia Garner, pictured above, is a member of a small but growing contingent of cancer patients who now have the privilege of living with metastatic or otherwise-incurable disease for years, even decades. Crandall reminds us that famous cancer patients like Lance Armstrong and Elizabeth Edwards keep cancer at bay and continue to live fairly normal lives. She says, and I think we all agree, that while the road may be a rough one, most of us are pretty grateful to be on it at all.
Targeted therapies like Gleevec, Herceptin and Avastin have redefined survival. Crandall quotes Paul Richardson, MD, clinical director of the Jerome Lipper Center for Multiple Myeloma a the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, "Targeted drugs are less toxic to normal tissue; they reflect a better understanding of the biology of cancer." Cancer is also being attacked now by combining targeted drugs and using some of these drugs in a new way - as maintenance therapy to keep cancer from returning.
Crandall admits that while new drug therapies give patients new hope, patients have to balance gratitude with uncertainty about the future. Many of us know that we are always just about two steps ahead of the research - and we never want to have to take one step back, do we?
Anyway, the fun part of the article for me was this --- she describes Virginia as a "COMPETITIVE RUNNER." We got a chuckle out of this. My friend, Virginia, is a wonder woman and HAS done about ten marathons, but running is rare while RACE WALKING RULES !!!
It's a great article and it's also great fun to open up a magazine and see a familiar face. If you would like to read the entire article, go to:
http://www.lhj.com/health/conditions/cancer/the-good-news-about-cancer/?page=1
