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Every 13 minutes, someone in our country dies of breast cancer.
I made a vow that I would do all I could to end breast cancer so the suffering ended with me.
The science is there for early detection. The science is there to end breast cancer as a fatal illness by training the body to fight the illness.
We no longer have to accept breast cancer, an epidemic that kills over 55,000 a year, as part of our lives.
We can be the ones who erased breast cancer.
How Ohio Changed: It only takes one to start the ball roling
It was not money or power that led to change in Ohio. It was the story told by an Ohio mother of five likely to die because of misguided policies and an indifference to the unnecessary and preventible deaths of more women than in the Vietnam War each and every year.
I am that woman. No one in my family had breast cancer. I went to a woman’s specialist. My mammograms were clear year after year. But, in 2018, after feeling a heaviness in my breast, I checked, and learned that I had “de novo” stage 4 breast cancer. I had a 1 in 2 chance of dying in the next 2 years and the chances of being in complete remission, 1 to in 100. If the cancer had been caught early, my chances of being in complete remission were 99 in 100.
The oncologist assigned to my case, Dr. Elyse Lower, then Director of the University of Cincinnati Breast Care Center, explained that I was not alone and that half of women over 40 have dense breasts and she saw heart breaking cases like mine week in and week out. She said that finding a tumor in dense breasts on a mammogram is akin to finding a snowflake in a snowstorm. Other newer affordable screening tools could have found my cancer but in Ohio,the additional screening was not covered and it was a great injustice.
I told Dr. Lower that I would fight to live and for all other women to have the right to early detection. if I survived, no woman with breast cancer would ever walk alone again. The suffering would end with me.
Dr. Elyse Lower brought in two nationally recognized radiologists Dr. Annie Brown and Dr. Mahoney and I brought in bi-partisan Ohio legislators Reps. Jean Schmidt and Sedrick Denson. University of Cincinnati placed its name and support behind us. In 2022, together we passed an Ohio bill that is a model for the nation for the early detection of breast cancer for all women.
Today , the nation’s great scientists have joined acclaimed NBC National News Correspondent, Kristen Dahlgren, and me to erase breast cancer from our world, the Pink Eraser Project. .
MFor the sake of the women who died and the ones who will die today, tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow, I continue to work for the day when breast cancer will be no more, thankfully with more and more voices joining my own and we are being heard. Please join us.