1. < Breast Cancer

How do you respond to this?

Posted by Judy Nauman Churchfield @judychurch, 6 days ago

My daughter has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, and all of our friends have been very supportive and empathetic. BUT...we ran into a friend whom we hadn't seen in quite some time, and the first things she asked were, "Didn't you have a mammogram every year? Why didn't they catch it earlier? Didn't you feel the lump?" etc etc. It felt like she was blaming my daughter instead of offering any sympathy, and quite frankly I wanted to smack her. Way to go, you just made my precious daughter feel bad. How would you respond?

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Judy Nauman Churchfield | @judychurch | 1 day ago
In reply to @jardinera25 "A sister of my good friend found out she had stage 4 with metastasis to her..." + (show)
@jardinera25

A sister of my good friend found out she had stage 4 with metastasis to her spine. She'd been told originally it was just back pain and to go for physical therapy. Finally after a mammogram or a test of some sort, they realized it was breast cancer. That was 8 years ago. She has done very well with radiation and treatments with Herceptin infusions for her HER-2 positive BC, maybe other things I'm unaware of. She exercises and eats very healthy. It's possible for people with stage 4 illness to do very well.

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Oh, that is very inspiring!! My daughter is also HER-2 positive, has had one infusion, had her 4th vertebrae replaced and is halfway through her radiation treatment (10x). She is also taking Kisqali and Letrozole. So far, so good, she is not having any problems with the radiation or pills. She is very stoic and is determined to fight this as long as possible. The oncologist has not mentioned mastectomy or chemo yet, so we don't know what's next. All we know is that we're very lucky to have a team of skilled physicians on our side, who really seem to care.

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Judy Nauman Churchfield | @judychurch | 1 day ago
In reply to @rgn "There is a book, There is No Good Card for This, written by two women, cancer..." + (show)
@rgn

There is a book, There is No Good Card for This, written by two women, cancer survivors.
It helps to make sense of these kind of remarks with GREAT HUMOR.

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I will see if our library has it! If not, I'll try Amazon. Thanks!

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