Word: developable
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...into the future, however, it helps to know a little biology. Most breast cancers begin in the milk ducts, narrow passageways that radiate throughout the breast. A few cells, for reasons that are not completely understood, start accumulating genetic mistakes that cause them to grow abnormally. Eventually the cells develop into DCIS. The good thing about dcis cells is that they haven't spread beyond the milk duct. The bad thing is that they are malignant. "Some people call DCIS precancer, but it's not precancer," says Dr. Dennis Slamon, director of breast-cancer research at the UCLA School...
...receive the "watchful waiting" approach pioneered in prostate-cancer patients, they weren't treated as aggressively as they might have been. For five years after their tumors were surgically removed, doctors did nothing more unless there was a recurrence. Though 11% of the women did in fact develop a second cancer, their survival rate (and this is the key) was comparable to that of another group of women who had undergone chemotherapy (with or without the drug tamoxifen) at the time of their surgery...
Herceptin is only a beginning, says UCLA's Slamon, who identified the HER2 receptor. There are bound to be other cancer proteins that pharmaceutical manufacturers can use as targets as they develop new, more selective drugs. "Using a combination of [these kinds of] therapies earlier in the disease could have a dramatic impact on outcomes," Slamon says...
...question about what to do with DCIS is also rife with extenuating factors. If DCIS never left the breast ducts, physicians could safely ignore it. No one knows for sure, but at least one study suggests that perhaps 40% of DCIS lesions will develop into invasive tumors that, if left untreated, could eventually prove fatal. That means that maybe 60% of DCIS cases never threaten a woman's health--and therefore these growths do not need to be removed...
Never give up, and try to develop a sense of humor. Try to laugh at yourself. Think of other people. I get so many letters, phone calls--"Kirk, will you talk to my mother? She's just had a stroke." I am amazed at how many people have strokes. I admire people like Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve, who use their handicap to try to help others. You also have to do your exercises every day. I still do my "oral aerobics...