Patient Advocacy and ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium

I returned late last night from ASCO and am trying to catch up on e-mails. I had to giggle, since there were a few questions as to my health background and affiliations regarding my attendance at the ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium. I felt like maybe I needed a breast cancer resume! Like all of you, I have recurrent breast cancer. I have been in continual treatment since 2001 and am on my 9th protocol. I guess that qualifies me as a member of this club! Presently, I am in the TDM-1 Clinical Study and am feeling great, only having to go to chemo every 3 weeks, thus I can travel a bit. I attended ASCO as a patient advocate for my local community advocacy group, "Mayo Clinic Pink Sisters and Friends". I also am a member of the National Breast Cancer Coalition and the Florida Breast Cancer Foundation. These organizations are all advocacy groups, focusing on education, research and advocacy training. My hope is that others in our group will find these groups or other advocacy groups to be as invigorating as I have. I am gathering the information from the ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium and will try to post a summary of hot topics as soon as I can pull it together. Until then, I invite you to go on the ASCO website for details from this annual meeting,
www.asco.org I met the founders of breastcancertrials.org This is a wonderful website to search for clinical trials and has great application for so many of us as we look for new therapies.