My friend Roxanne Nelson is a cancer writer for Medscape, and she recently interviewed me for a piece she wrote which was published online July 7. She told me about a book by Dr. Kelly Turner called "Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Beyond All Odds" and reviews the book in this article. I am currently reading the book and I highly recommend it.
Here is the intro to Roxanne's article:
"According to statistics, Lola Baltzell should have died 3 years ago. Instead, she celebrated the fifth anniversary of her diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer by biking 110 miles to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the Pan-Mass Challenge.
Not only is Baltzell still alive after 6 years when median survival is 3 years, her scans have been clear of cancer for more than 5 and a half years.
"You will never be in remission, you are a chronic patient, you will never be cured — that's what the doctors keep telling me," she said. "But every scan done after November 2008 has been negative."
Baltzell, a 53-year-old social worker and artist who lives in the Boston area, is constantly on the move. She bikes to work year round, no matter what the weather, curates art shows, has showings of her own work, and is an avid practitioner of yoga and meditation. She sees herself as strong and healthy, and is hopeful that she will continue to defy the statistics.
Baltzell's experience is not unique. Although it is neither typical nor common, it is not all that rare. There are thousands of cancer patients just like her, who have extended their survival way beyond the upper limits of the median or who are seemingly cured after a terminal prognosis.
These individuals, sometimes called exceptional patients, have begun to attract the attention of researchers who are interested in what, if anything, they are doing to heal themselves of incurable diseases or to improve their chances of being cured."
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I continue to do well. In May I got a blood clot which was attributed to too much Tamoxifen. In retrospect, I wish I had listened to myself and gone off it months ago. Lesson learned! I continue to take Lovenox twice a day for the blood clot and will finish in a few weeks. It is not particularly painful -- tiny pre-filled needles that I inject into my belly fat -- but mostly annoying. The only thing that really worries me about it is if I get a bad cut or bruise -- the risk of severe bleeding is real and kind of scary. I did crash my bike a few weeks ago -- I never crashed before! -- but nothing really bad happened other than huge bruises and some scrapes that took weeks to heal. My body is all banged up, including the band around my belly where I inject. A pharmacist friend told me it's actually wise to carry the script with me in case I get pulled over by the police -- they could question why I have syringes! That's funny, right?
Although I was told to be careful about falling off the bike, I am training this summer for another century ride on September 20 out of Northampton, MA. It is described as a challenging century ride with lots of hills up into Vermont. My average long ride is now 60+ miles (once a week) so if I continue to train on hills and take one more super long training ride (80 miles) I should be able to do the ride.
I'll see The Vixen August 4. I am hoping that she takes me off my one remaining cancer drug, the Lupron shot which I get every 3 months. On August 25 I'll celebrate 6 years of surviving metastatic breast cancer. Wow!
