Yesterday was my 50th birthday and with is being such a weird time I have been trying to come up with a way to make it special and my birthday wish is to raise money for Metavivor. Metavivor is the only breast cancer charity that uses 100% of the money donated for research to help find a cure and treatments for metastatic breast cancer (MBC). Their mission is to transition metastatic breast cancer from a terminal diagnosis to a chronic, manageable disease with a decent quality of life.
The world is worried about COVID-19 and it should be. However, the number of women and some men dying from Metastatic breast cancer has not stopped during this crisis. In fact, it probably has increased due to most people with cancer being immunocompromised. I personally know with someone fighting COVID-19 and MBC right now.
I was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer in 2015 when I was 44 years. I had 16 rounds of chemo, a lumpectomy, and radiation in the hopes that the cancer would not back. I also took Tamoxifen daily to stop the cancer as well. In 2018, after 4 clean mammograms and ultrasounds, I started having horrible bone pain in my hip, pelvis and sacrum. So much pain that I was convinced I had broken a bone since I could barely walk. I still believed the narrative though that is pushed on women, that if you check your breasts and if you catch it early, you’re fine. I was the poster child for positive thinking However, positive thinking is not a cure. This pain turned out to be the cancer back again that had now metastasized to my bones. Metastatic breast cancer is terminal and kills more than 116 people every day in the US alone. What I didn’t realize is that this will happen to 30% of early stage breast cancer “survivors”. Not one single doctor told me that. I recently found out that the chemo pills that I have been on for a year are not working and have changed to a new treatment. It has only been approved since May of last year. Without research, this drug would not be available to me. Even though I have been living with MBC for over a year now, I am still counted as successfully treated for early-stage breast cancer in the 5 year survival percentages given to early stage patients. The way MBC is tracked seems a bit like a cruel joke.
“Despite the billions of dollars collected and spent on breast-cancer research over the past half-century, relatively little has been devoted to studying metastatic-breast-cancer patients or their particular forms of the disease. Doctors do not know why some breast cancers eventually form deadly metastases or how to quash the disease once it has spread. Patients with metastatic disease are typically treated with one drug after another, their doctors switching the medications whenever the disease stops responding to treatment. Eventually, nearly all patients with breast-cancer metastases run out of options and die, although in recent years, many have been living longer.” This quote is from this great article in Time magazine. I encourage you to read it for more information.
If you are financially able to, I would love for you to donate to my Metavivor fundraiser. My crazy reach goal would be to raise $50,000 for my 50th birthday. Almost 10,000 of you receive our newsletter so if you each gave just $5 I could meet my goal. I know money is tight and I really am hoping for many small donations not large ones. You can just put your donation amount in the other category,
I wanted to be able to give back to anyone who donates $20 or more. If you donate, $20 or more I will send you my Meal Planning Made Simple system for free. With everyone eating at home, this is a great time to get your recipes organized and have a system for meal planning. Learn more about the Meal Planning System here. Don’t buy it though. After you have donated to Metavivor, just fill out this quick survey with your name and email and I will email you the ebook and printables to make your recipe binder.
Can’t donate or want to support in other ways. Here are a few ways
Thank you for reading my request and I hope that you have learned something about MBC as well. One in eight woman will be diagnosed with breast cancer and I am sure you know friends and family who have been. This research can help all of them too.
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