Updated October 01, 2014.

For years, it seemed to me that when it came to Breast Cancer Awareness Month there was so much information being shared that didn’t make much sense to me. Most often I had been told that all the money was being spent on campaigns for early detection only and not nearly enough was being done to help those with advanced breast cancer. I was also told that the money being raised was mostly going to line the pockets of those at the big pharmaceutical companies and major organizations who were not interested in finding a cure.

So over the last year I set about to do my own research to find out what was really going on and I would like to share what I found.

For the vast majority, breast cancer awareness means that women (not men) get breast cancer and that breast cancer can be cured if it is found soon enough. For them, Breast Cancer Awareness Month is the time when everyone wears pink and raises money for breast cancer but no one knows what happens to all of that money. If you get breast cancer, you will most likely have surgery to remove the cancer, then have chemotherapy, which means you will lose your hair and then get radiation treatment and then you are cured. But, then it might come back in which case you will die.

What a losing battle we seem to be fighting with education about breast cancer when this is where we are when it comes to breast cancer “awareness”. So, I would like to share a few things of which I have become aware in my personal mission to become more educated about breast cancer and what is the reality behind the “pink ribbon”.

During the past year, I have continued my research on what is occurring regarding the area of research and clinical trials and advances being made by the pharmaceutical companies, the large breast cancer organizations and the major cancer research centers associated with universities and colleges across the country. The results have been shared on both of my websites (Let Life Happen, In the News and When Breast Cancer Happens) on a daily basis with regard to current updates and progress across all lines of cancers. One of the reasons for including the research of other cancers is that as the research is progressing and more is understood about the makeup of the various cancers, more has been learned about how breast cancers may have similarities to cancers found in other parts of the body which could ultimately change the choices in drugs used to treat breast cancer.

In addition, research is being done to find ways to better administer treatments such as chemo and radiation to more accurately target the cancer cells and kill them while limiting the collateral damage to healthy cells throughout the body. The ability to administer the drugs directly to the cancers rather than infusing them to circulate throughout the entire body will also limit, if not alleviate, the side effects that are currently affecting those who receive chemo and radiation with the current methodologies.

Now if you follow the research results that are being published on a daily basis, you will find that they are coming from a huge number of sources from one end of this country to the other as well as internationally. So my next search centered upon the funding of these programs since even the wealthiest research programs couldn’t be totally funded privately and what I found was that the majority of the funds for these research programs are coming from the monies raised by the events that are held during the month of October and throughout the year. For instance, every single local event sponsored by the Susan G. Komen organization puts 75% of the monies raised right back into programs in the community that held the event and the other 25% goes to research. Personally, I am going to participate in an event in my community and 100% of the funds raised go to three research programs locally at the University of California Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and the City of Hope.

Further, I have reviewed from where the funding comes for so many organizations that are providing services to those who are dealing with breast cancer. In addition to the fund raising that the organizations are doing, I have learned about funds that are being provided by many of the pharmaceutical companies and large corporations to subsidize services including medication costs, food and rent and child care assistance, support groups and other mental health programs and just about any other need that a person may have. There are two initiatives that I recently found in my own area, as an example, tied to the Susan G. Komen organization. One is in concert with the company that provides the BRCA genes testing. They will be providing testing either free of charge or at a very reduced rate for those who can’t afford it. Another is a 2-year initiative across California to get African-American women out for mammograms. It isn’t that they aren’t aware that they need them but that they don’t have the financial resources to pay for them.  Or it may be that they don’t have the transportation to reach a facility to be tested or any one of several other reasons. As a result, African-American women are 41% more likely to die from breast cancer than their Caucasian counterparts and here in the city of Los Angeles, that figure is a whopping 70%.

There is one more matter that I would like to address and that is the belief that the large pharmaceutical companies and breast cancer organizations have no desire to “cure” cancer as they will be out of a job. So, I pondered this matter since I was pretty sure that any doctor who chooses research as their career path would earn substantially less than those who go into private practice and then I decided that I had to find out why they would make this choice. I think that one young doctor, Dr. Priscilla Brastianos, pretty much summed it up for me when I learned that her drive had come from losing her grandmother to breast cancer and then her mother just weeks prior to my meeting her. For her and for many others who elect to pursue a course of action or work related to breast cancer, it has become a personal thing. They have lived it themselves or have been intimately associated with someone that has and for them, there just is no other choice.

So many people will rely on statistics when speaking about the numbers related to breast cancer. If you have not already seen some of the results from the latest research, just look at the survival rates of those who are living with Stage IV cancer. It was not very long ago when a survival rate was measured only in months and not in years. Now I am seeing more people who are living for five years, 10 years, and even 20 years and more. Whereby the numbers who die each year from breast cancer has remained static over the last couple of decades, those who have been diagnosed and joined the ranks of the survivors is huge in comparison. In the past, when one or two of the available chemotherapy drugs didn’t work for a person, they were pretty much given no hope for life. Now with more options and drug combinations and lessons learned, there are more people living longer and more productive lives.

Of course we don’t have all of the answers yet but every single day I am finding more and more information about new drugs, new therapies, new treatments and the promise of so much more on the horizon. So if you think that nothing is being done to help those who are Stage IV breast cancer survivors, I challenge you to take another look at all that is going on around us. Check out the progress that is being made and put it into context with what has already been done.

It is my hope that a new breast cancer “awareness” will emerge and that as we learn more, we can understand why early detection does remain the most important factor for most. But for those who have or will have advanced breast cancer, I want you to know that you are not forgotten and that your future has changed to dealing with a life-long disease from one of no hope. Breast Cancer Awareness Month should be a time when we make everyone aware of all of the progress that has been made and all of the hope for the future that will continue to inspire and drive all of us to support and help one another until the day comes when we have reached the goal of no more loss of life to breast cancer.