Metatatic Breast Cancer deserves more

October is pumpkin spice and jack o lanterns and crisp mornings and pink ribbons. It is Halloween and homecoming and races “for the cure”. For people like me, with metastatic breast cancer, it is “Pinktober” and a reminder that we will never be cured, because despite 30 years of awareness and fundraising, 40,000 Americans still die every year from metastatic breast cancer, just as many as died in 1970. A recent survey by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals about public perception of metastatic breast cancer (MBC) showed that 60% knew little to nothing about the disease and 72% believed it could be cured if caught early.

Metastatic is from the Greek word for wanderer, so it means the breast cancer has left the breast and spread to other places like the bones, lungs, liver or brain. There is no such thing as finding MBC early; even one wayward cell is a death sentence, for in 2015 there is still no cure for metastatic breast cancer. Once diagnosed, the average life expectancy is 32 months; less than a quarter of women and men (yes men can and do die of breast cancer) survive 5 years and less than 2% are able to celebrate their 10 year “metaversary”.

I was diagnosed with MBC on 11/14/2013, 6 months after the supposedly magic 5 year “you're cured” milestone. I'm “lucky” because, for now, it's just in my bones – almost every bone – and chemo has gotten me to the point of no active disease. But no active disease doesn’t mean no disease, because cancer cells are circulating in my body 24/7/365 looking for an opportunity to outsmart my treatment and continue their relentless pursuit to kill me. After 14 months of iv chemo, I'm now on oral medication and my hair has grown back and I don't look so sickly. I'm often asked when my treatment will end, and the answer is never. Like the 155,000 other Americans living with MBC I will always be in treatment. Let me say that again: treatment for MBC NEVER ends, until there are no options left, until the cancer has outsmarted everything we have to throw at it. And then we die.

This knowledge has not defeated me. I will never give up in my quest to keep my cancer under control. I will never be silent in educating and demanding research to find effective treatments for my disease. To this end, I got on a plane and flew over 2500 miles to Washington, D.C., where today I was one of 113 people lying down on the lawn of the Capitol to represent the 113 Americans who die every single day from MBC. I met with an aide to Senator Boxer to ask that more research dollars be directed to metastatic research; only 7% of all cancer research dollars goes to studying metastatic cancer – and that 7% is divided up among all the different types of cancer. We are asking that this be increased to 30%, because it is metastatic, not early stage, cancer that kills.

This October, please remember those of us with MBC. Please “think before you pink”. Please support our local cancer league or a national organization like METAvivor (metavivor.org), where 100% of donations go to metastatic breast cancer research for treatments to turn what today is a death sentence into a chronic, manageable disease, like diabetes or AIDs. I can live with that.

-Kelly Shanahan, doctor, wife, mother, woman LIVING with metastatic breast cancer 10/13/15, from the US Capitol