More than a quarter million American women are diagnosed each year with breast cancer. More than 43,000 of them die from the disease each year, according to the American Cancer Society. Aside from skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer among American women, according to the Centers for Disease Control.Funding research to fight breast cancer in women and men is the goal of the annual Rays of Hope Walk & Run Toward the Cure of Breast Cancer, which is being held virtually this year due to COVID-19 with participants parading in cars on Sunday October 24. Organizers say they hope to raise their usual $600,000 to pay for research and care at Baystate Health facilities.
“I think that every day, every day is a celebration, not just once a year. Every day is a celebration for us. Any time we could get up,” Rays of Hope 2020-2021 Co-Chair and 12 year survivor Jackie Rodriguez told And Another Thing.
About one in five breast cancer diagnoses in this country this year will be a form in which cancerous cells are confined within the milk ducts. There were more than 2,200 of these ductal carcinoma in situ or DCIS cancer cases in New England alone last year, according to the American Cancer Society.
Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center is launching a new program designed to address the unique needs of women diagnosed with the earliest form of breast cancer. It is the only program in the Northeast dedicated to DCIS.
"I want patients who are diagnosed with DCIS to be optimistic because, it's treatable and, not a threat to their mortality," Dr. Elizabeth Mittendorf, director of the program, told And Another Thing, "It's possible that disease will become invasive cancer, but it doesn't have to happen. And if it's going to happen, we don't know the time course over which that will occur. So in some women, it may never become invasive. In some women, it may do so in the next three years. And some it may take 10 years. We just don't know."