COMMUNITY EVENTS

The American Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer is more than an event – it's your opportunity to join our fight against breast cancer.

For more information about Making Strides and other breast cancer programs in your community, click here.

SURVIVOR SPOTLIGHT

October 2006

Making Strides In Your Community

You can make a difference in the fight against breast cancer in your community … and getting involved is easier than ever. Read More

Making Strides to Save Lives

Women could have another drug choice for reducing breast cancer risk if the FDA approves raloxifene. Learn more about the drug and how it differs from tamoxifen. Read More

Making Strides In Your Life

Eating right, being active, and maintaining a healthy weight are important ways to reduce your risk of breast cancer – as well as other types of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. If you like to eat out, you can still eat healthy. Find out how to enjoy the foods you love without a calorie overload. Read More

Help Continue Making Strides

How can you help win the fight against breast cancer? We offer a variety of suggestions, events, and programs in your area to further the progress against this disease. Read More

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Full Articles

Making Strides In Your Community

You Can Help Make Strides
While breast cancer deaths are declining thanks to early detection and better treatments, more than 212,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and nearly 41,000 will die from the disease this year. To help ensure the important women in our lives will never have to face this disease, we must do more to fight breast cancer.

You can join the fight against breast cancer by participating in one of the American Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer ® walks nationwide. This inspiring event unites communities to honor and celebrate breast cancer survivors, educate women about the importance of early detection and prevention, and raise money to fund lifesaving research and support programs to further our progress against this disease. This noncompetitive event ranges from five kilometers (3.1 miles) to five miles, depending upon the location, and individuals of all ages are welcome to participate. Events are held in more than 115 cities across the country..

Joining Making Strides Against Breast Cancer is easy. At www.cancer.org/stridesonline, a click of your mouse is all it takes to…

• Sign up to participate in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event in your community. You can start a team, join an existing team, or register as an individual walker.

• Customize a personal Web page to collect and manage online donations from friends, family members, coworkers, and neighbors to support your efforts.

• Send customized emails to friends and family explaining why you are involved in Making Strides and inviting them to sign up, join your team, or make a secure online donation on your behalf.

• View your team and fundraising progress any time.

• Learn more about breast cancer and what you can do to help fight the disease.

For more information about Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, visit www.cancer.org/stridesonline. For more information about other critical breast cancer programs and resources, click here or call us anytime, day or night, at 1-800-ACS-2345.

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Making Strides to Save Lives

Raloxifene as Good as Tamoxifen to Prevent Invasive Breast Cancer
Both Drugs Cut Risk in Half for High-Risk Women
American Cancer Society News Center

The bone drug raloxifene (Evista) is just as good as tamoxifen in preventing invasive breast cancer in high-risk women, federal officials recently announced. Both drugs cut the risk of breast cancer in half.

This drug could provide women with another option to safeguard their health if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves raloxifene for breast cancer prevention, experts said. But which drug a woman chooses will depend on her particular situation, since the two medications are slightly different.

"Although no drugs are without side effects, tamoxifen and raloxifene are vital options for women who are at an increased risk of breast cancer and want to take action," said Leslie Ford, MD, associate director for clinical research at the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Prevention. "For many women, raloxifene's benefits will outweigh its risks in a way that tamoxifen's benefits do not."

Ford was one of the researchers on the Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene, known as the STAR trial. Results of the study were first announced in April of this year and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in June.

The STAR trial involved nearly 20,000 women who had a higher-than-average risk for breast cancer because of factors such as age, family history of the disease, personal medical history, age at which they began menstruating, or the age they had their first child. The women had to be at least 35 years old and already past menopause. Nearly half of the women in the study were 50-59 years old, and another 41 percent were 60 or older. More than 93 percent of the women in the study were white; 2.5 percent were African American and 2 percent were Hispanic.

Half of the women were randomly assigned to take raloxifene, and half were assigned to tamoxifen. They took the drugs every day for five years. Both drugs are pills.

Comparison of the Two Drugs
Tamoxifen and raloxifene lowered the risk of invasive breast cancer by about the same amount, researchers said. Previous studies have shown that tamoxifen reduces risk by about 50 percent. The women taking either drug had similar risks for strokes and heart attacks, and both drugs seemed to reduce the risk of bone breaks by about the same extent.

But there were also some important differences.

Both drugs are known to increase the risk of blood clots in major veins and the lungs, but women on raloxifene were less likely to develop them than those on tamoxifen. They also were less likely to get cataracts or need cataract surgery than women on tamoxifen. The study showed that women on raloxifene were less likely to develop abnormalities in the uterus and less likely to need a hysterectomy, but there was no statistical difference in the risk of uterine cancer between the groups.

Fewer women on tamoxifen developed non-invasive breast cancers, although the difference did not quite reach statistical significance. Tamoxifen is known to reduce the risk of developing lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS) and ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) by about half. Although LCIS and DCIS are not life-threatening, they do require treatment and women who develop either condition (particularly DCIS) have a higher risk of developing breast cancer later.

The study did not find differences in the quality of life reported by women on either drug. Those on raloxifene did report more bone and muscle problems, weight gain, and lower sexual function, while those on tamoxifen reported more incontinence, leg cramps, gynecological problems, and hot flashes and night sweats.

Raloxifene Not Yet Approved for Breast Cancer Prevention
Raloxifene is not yet approved by the FDA as a breast cancer prevention drug. However, about half a million women past menopause already take the drug to prevent or treat osteoporosis. Raloxifene's manufacturer, Eli Lilly and Co., plans to ask the FDA to approve it for breast cancer prevention.

Tamoxifen is most commonly used as a treatment for women with breast cancer whose tumors have estrogen receptors. In 1998 it was approved for use to prevent breast cancer in high-risk women. The FDA has specific criteria for determining if a woman is eligible to take tamoxifen for this purpose. It is estimated that about 15 percent of all women over age 35 would be eligible to use tamoxifen in this way, but not every woman who could take it for breast cancer prevention does. The side effects have frightened many women away from using tamoxifen for this purpose, noted Norman Wolmark, MD, chairman of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), which ran the study.

Women who are considering breast cancer prevention therapy should talk with their doctor about their options, experts say. That's because each woman's personal health history is important in determining whether this type of drug is right for her.

"Raloxifene provides women at high risk of breast cancer another alternative to reduce their chances of developing the disease," said Len Lichtenfeld, MD, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. "Women who are concerned about their risk should talk with their health care clinicians to determine whether they would benefit from either of these treatments, and which one would be best for them."

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Making Strides In Your Life

Enjoy the Foods You Love Without a Calorie Overload Restaurant Eating Tips
An important part of cancer prevention is living a healthy lifestyle – that means eating right, being active, and maintaining a healthy weight. Whether you are a busy mom, an on-the-go executive, or just always battling with food temptations, we have dozens of ideas for you to eat delicious restaurant foods without blowing your diet. This article includes helpful information on ordering tips, good menu choices, hidden calories, fast food, Mexican food, and Italian food.

The Plan: When you know you're going to eat out, think about what foods you'll choose over the whole day. For example, plan on a light lunch if you'll eat out at dinnertime. Try not to skip meals, which may make you overindulge later. And most importantly, try not to show up at the restaurant famished! If you would like to splurge on a higher calorie entrée, plan to skip dessert, and commit to sticking to your plan once in the restaurant.

Ordering Tips: Eating out doesn't have to wreak havoc with your diet. Try some of the following tactics to help make restaurant foods fit into your own eating plan.

• Order regular portion sizes instead of the jumbo sizes offered. Try an appetizer, half an entrée, or share a meal with a friend and order an extra side salad. Ask for half the entrée to be wrapped up to go before the food is brought to the table.
• Get exactly what you want by ordering each item separately (a la carte). For example, one chicken enchilada easy-on-the-sauce, side salad, and fruit desert instead of the # 8 enchilada plate with rice, beans, sour cream, guacamole, etc.
• Ask how dishes are prepared and if restaurants can do it your way: grill the chicken, steam the vegetables, bring sauces and salad dressings on the side, put just a dollop of cream sauce on the pasta primavera and extra grilled vegetables.
• Don't tempt yourself! Have the waiter remove the bowl of chips, peanuts, or the basket of bread after you've had a small portion. Calories from mindless nibbling can add up before you know it. Don't sit near the dessert cart either.
• Limit alcohol. It is high in calories, has few nutrients, and can weaken your will power.

Good Menu Choices: The following foods and methods of preparation are likely your best choices to help you stay within your healthy eating plan.

• Clear broth-based soups like Chinese won ton or hot and sour soup, consumme, tortilla soup, or minestrone
• Lettuce or spinach salads with vegetables and dressing on the side (go easy on the bacon bits, croutons, cheese, and mayonnaise-based items like macaroni salad or tuna salad)
• Raw vegetables (crudités) with a small amount of low-calorie dip
• Steamed vegetables with a slice of lemon; grilled veggies if not drenched in oil
• Meats that are grilled, broiled, roasted, or baked without added fat (choose seafood that is broiled, baked, steamed, blackened, or poached – think tender sole poached in parchment with broth, savory vegetables and herbs)
• A reasonable portion of steak – 3.6 oz.; other lean meat cuts served au jus, with a piquant fruit sauce or stir-fried with vegetables (again, go easy on the rich sauces)
• A baked potato with a pat of butter or small amount of sour cream (top with broccoli, low-fat chili, or salsa)
• Sandwiches on whole wheat, pita, multigrain breads with low-fat deli meats and cheeses, mustard, relish, ketchup, or low-fat mayonnaise (add flavor and vitamins with roasted sweet peppers, lettuce, tomato, jalapenos, and a small amount of chopped olives)
• Fresh fruit, sherbet, and angel food cake for dessert

Hidden Calories: Look for the following descriptions to uncover higher calorie menu choices: pan-fried, sautéed, battered, breaded, au gratin, cheesy, creamy, buttered, deep-fried, béarnaise, or crispy – as in the "crispy," deep-fried tortilla bowl holding the salad.

Fast Food: It's fast! It's easy! It tastes good! There are lots of reasons why people cruise through fast food restaurants. "I'm trying to lose weight," is not usually one of them. While the occasional burger and fries won't wreak havoc with your waistline, eating at fast food restaurants regularly might.

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Help Continue Making Strides

Make Strides Through Advocacy
The National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP) provides low-income, uninsured, and underinsured women access to critical breast cancer screenings. But Congress has failed to provide enough funding for this lifesaving program. Currently, the program can only serve one in five eligible women. So, what about the other four?

You can make strides through advocacy by urging Congress to increase funding for the NBCCEDP by $48 million this year to save the lives of women across the nation.

Take action now at www.acscan.org/makingstrides. Become a grassroots advocate to ensure all women have access to breast cancer screening and treatments, regardless of their income

Join 50,000 Women from Across the Country to Help Discover the Causes of Breast Cancer

The Sister Study, conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, is a nationwide study to help us better understand the reasons women get breast cancer by studying women who have sisters with the disease. If you or someone you know is a woman who lives in the United States or Puerto Rico , is between the ages of 35 and 74, has never had breast cancer, and has a sister related by blood who has had breast cancer, you may be eligible. To learn more about the Sister Study and how you can get involved, visit www.sisterstudy.org.

Other Ways You Can Make Strides in Your Community

• Walk in Making Strides Against Breast Cancer and raise donations from family, friends, and coworkers. Sign up at www.cancer.org/stridesonline.

• Make a generous, tax-deductible donation online or by calling 1-800-ACS-2345.

• Volunteer for our many breast cancer programs and events in your community.

• Protect yourself against breast cancer by getting a mammogram every year if you are a woman who is 40 or older. Sign up for an email mammogram reminder at www.cancer.org/stridesonline.

• Show your support for the fight against breast cancer by purchasing your Making Strides Against Breast Cancer and other breast cancer merchandise at www.ACSgiftshop.org. Up to 15 percent of the net proceeds of all sales benefit the American Cancer.

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Finding her voice
By Leah Ingram
Photography by Steven Crawford
Reprinted from Triumph Magazine, with permission from Pace Communications and the American Cancer Society

Kay Reese would likely agree that having cancer has enriched her life, or, at the very least, it has added another dimension to an already rich life that she had been building for more than a decade.

An artist by training, Kay, now 60, had an epiphany soon after her 2001 breast cancer diagnosis: she should create a work of art out of her experience to provide other women with the hope that they, too, can overcome the disease. Sounds reasonable for a woman who works in various media, including painting, photography, and collage. However, had Kay's diagnosis occurred 10 years earlier, she might not have had the same response.

After 20 years spent in a safe career, Kay gave up her marketing communications business and returned to her art. “When you're young, your parents tell you to get a job and be safe, and that's what I did. I did everything but be an artist,” recalls Kay. So in 1989, in her late 40s, she took the plunge. “That's a huge leap to make at that age. That's agreeing to be poor for however long it takes to get established,” she says. “I had no idea what to expect, but I took the leap of faith.”

After securing part-time work to pay for bills and studio space, Kay faced her biggest challenge—finding her voice as an artist. “Do I have anything to say?” she recalls asking herself. Obviously she did, because a few years later, she submitted some mixed media drawings to a major art competition—and took home first place, along with a $2,500 stipend. “Winning validated that I had done the right thing,” she says.

Fast forward to 2001 when Kay experienced two major events in her life. On the positive side, she had a commitment for a show in the Empire State Building of her large-scale, mixed media pieces. On the negative side, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Cancer transformed

Thanks to a regular mammogram, Kay's cancer was detected early. But with only two months to go before her exhibition, Kay sought a second opinion regarding treatment. Both physicians agreed that Kay could postpone treatment until her show closed in June.

“I told my doctors that I needed to get through this exhibition and once it had ended, we could do the surgery,” she recalls. Numerous calcifications throughout her breast tissue led her doctors to concur that a mastectomy was Kay's best treatment option.

After the show closed, Kay had her mastectomy and reconstructive surgery in July. Throughout treatment her mind was focused on future art projects. “I asked my surgeon to videotape my mastectomy and reconstruction. I kept some of the tissue slides [from the diagnosis] and cards that people gave me when they found out [about the breast cancer],” she says.

Kay plans to work those elements into a breast cancer-inspired work of art along with the scanned and digital photographs that she alters to create her self-described surrealist works. In the meantime, she is using her breast cancer experience to give back in a more traditional way—as an American Cancer Society Reach to Recovery ® volunteer.

“I always knew that I wanted to talk to people one-on-one about my breast cancer experience, and when the [American Cancer Society] was looking for volunteers to provide such counseling for breast cancer survivors, I called them and went through training. Now that's what I do.”

While being a Reach to Recovery volunteer is not as much about the talking as it is about the listening, it's clear that when women like Kay open their ears, their hearts, and their minds to the experience of breast cancer, they definitely have important things to share and to say.

For 35 years, the American Cancer Society's Reach to Recovery program has been helping breast cancer patients cope with their diagnosis. With a nationwide network of more than 13,000 trained breast cancer survivors, patients are carefully matched with one of these volunteers based on similar characteristics and lifestyles that may contribute to mutual understanding and ease of communication (i.e. diagnosis and treatment, age, marital status, etc.). Patients and their Reach to Recovery volunteers may meet in person or over the phone, through this relationship they receive emotional support and breast cancer information to help regain a sense of normalcy and hope after their diagnosis.

Reach to Recovery volunteers must be at least one year into post-treatment for breast cancer. While most volunteers are female, there are male volunteers as well. For more information about Reach to Recovery, call 1-800-ACS-2345.

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