Does "support" include treatment?

Komen just received a $1 million grant to tell poor ladies in the Rust Belt about breast cancer. Over the next four years, the program will train nearly 500 lay health advisors [first in Ohio, then east and west] to provide education and outreach on breast cancer in 17 communities served by Key Bank and Komen Affiliates nationwide. Lay health advisors will provide information, referrals to health care resources, one-on-one consultations, assistance with scheduling, support during health care visits and more.

Komen founder and CEO, Ambassador Nancy G. Brinker, said the grant will help Komen reach women who otherwise might not be helped. “These women may be unaware of their risk for breast cancer, unable to access the health care system for answers, or unsupported if they do need treatment. Our mission is to ensure that all women have the information and support they need to confront this disease. This commitment from KeyBank Foundation will help make that possible.”

Are these women going to be treated for their cancer? Is Komen going to get them mammograms and biopsies and MRIs and surgery and chemo and radiation? Will these disadvantaged women be trained to find out what they need, and then discover on their own that they can't get it it? I'm all for helping people who need help, but there's help and then there's help. The adviser can make an appointment for you, but who's going to foot the bill?? I can't find any more info about this on the web, and we bloggers are known as parasites of mainstream media, feeding on what's already out there, ready to quick-draw our opinions. Oh no, does this mean I'll have to do some original reporting? Stay tuned.

[NYT photo; patient claims surgery was unnecessary]

The New York Times tells us that that 17 percent of D.C.I.S. cases identified by a commonly used needle biopsy may be misdiagnosed. D.C.I.S. is ductal carcinoma in situ, aka Stage O cancer. The Times interviews women who had surgery (ranging up to a double mastectomy) who later found out they didn't have cancer after all.

I've been a critic of Susan B. Komen for the Cure, but it turns out that Komen has studied this. According to the Times, Komen reported in 2006 that in 90,000 cases, women who receive a diagnosis of D.C.I.S. or invasive breast cancer either did not have the disease or their pathologist made another error that resulted in incorrect treatment.

So--if you're diagnosed with Stage 0, get another opinion. So you won't need a lawyer later.

Nobody Likes Blago--Not Even Komen

Maybe Blago will keep sliding away until he's gone from the the frame.

The Dallas Morning News blog tells us that Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation gave nearly $45,000 to our disgraced governor. The story? Tony Rezko spent the money on Blago, then the guv paid it back by giving the tainted funds to charity--mostly to Komen. Komen didn't want it and gave it back. Opines the DMN: And it's folks like Blagojevich that no doubt makes them Run from the Cur.

Cancer Bitch reported on this earlier, quoting Capitol Fax.

For a pic of our guv and Trickie Dickie, click here.

Share your Stories of Hope, Celebration and Remembrance.

From Susan G Komen, San Antonio Affiliate.

November is a time of thanksgiving.

We are very thankful for our many Komen friends and would like to share your stories of hope, celebration and remembrance. Beginning in January and leading up to Race, Komen will feature stores of breast cancer Survivors and Co-Survivors (family, friends, health care providers and colleagues who lend support). If you'd like to share your story, please email info@sakomen.net the following:

Name and age

Survivors:  Brief background and how long you've been a survivor

Co-Survivors:  Relationship to survivor with brief background

What advice would you give someone who is or knows someone going through the battle with breast cancer?

What inspired you?

Were there positive outcomes dealing with breast cancer?

Thanks.

******

Keep up to date with the latest breast reconstruction news by following The Breast Cancer Reconstruction Blog.

******

B-watch & Komen-watch

B-watch
Our friend B spent last night on the floor next to his bed. His helper didn't show up last night and his cell phone was downstairs. The helper showed up this morning and got him dressed and into his scooter. B called me to come and plug in his new scooter. It took both of us about 20 minutes to figure out where on the scooter you plug in the plug-thing. I couldn't read the info booklet without my reading glasses, and B said it didn't tell you where the cord went. But as I said, finally we prevailed. You'd think that a manufacturer of scooters for disabled people would have a special easy way to recharge the battery of the thing.
B is advertising for a new helper. If anyone knows a reliable person who can dress and undress someone with MS, as well as do very light housekeeping, and, if possible, light clerical duties, let me know (in comments section). It would help if the person lived nearby--Lakeview or Uptown.


Komen-watch
Our friend S went out with Nancy Brinker when she was just a Homecoming Queen runner-up from Peoria. Now she's a Dallas socialite and founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, named for her dead sister. In today's post, Capitol Fax talks about Komen and contributions. You see how important apostrophes are when you read the last sentence. Does he mean politician's or politicians' cash?
Reports Rich Miller of Capitol Fax:

"Only days after Antoin 'Tony' Rezko was indicted on federal corruption charges last fall,[Illinois] Gov. Rod Blagojevich's campaign moved quickly to try to limit the fallout and gave to charity political donations directly linked to one of the governor's former top advisers and fundraisers.But one charity eventually turned down the tainted money and sent the Blagojevich campaign a check back in March for $44,846.03, according to state-mandated campaign disclosure reports the governor recently filed.Officials for the Texas-based Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, now known as Susan G. Komen for the Cure, said they returned the money because they do not accept political funds. [*]Despite the Komen foundation's explanation, state campaign disclosure records for the past seven years show the foundation and its Illinois affiliates previously accepted $2,110 in politician's cash, ranging from an ad in a program book to fundraising tickets to outright donations."

In other Komen news: Earlier this month, the Komen gave $2 million to oncologist Insoo Bae of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center to continue to study the the interaction between environmental carcinogens and genetic risk for breast cancer. The Lombardi Center reports that Bae is looking at the way genes and environment combine to cause cancer. Specifically: "Bae will examine a range of environmental carcinogens – such as cigarette smoke, alcohol, and dietary factors – to identify those agents that increase the probability that BRCA1 defective cells will become cancerous." Komen needs to keep going after the causes of cancer, and spend less time and money tying pink ribbons around everything that breathes and everything that doesn't. The Bae research is good news for us Ashkenazim, those mostly likely to have a BRCA1 or 2 mutation in our genes. As for me, I'm waiting to hear from the jolly genetic counselors about what my blood sample revealed. According to them, I have an 18 percent chance of having a BRCA gene defect. I probably don't. It would be nice if I didn't. About 90 percent of Jews in the U.S. are Ashkenazi, from West, Central and East European countries. The rest are Sephardic, from Mediterranean and Arab countries. They're more likely to have mothers who belly-dance. We're the ones whose grandmothers spoke Yiddish. Yeah, yeah, I know that your German-Jewish grandmother quoted Goethe and didn't know from Yiddish. I'm speaking in general.

Cancer Bitch Behaves Badly Again

I went to Caribou Coffee on my way to meet my friend F for lunch. There were bags of coffee for sale with pink ribbons on them. Part of the price goes to the Susan G. Komen foundation, which goes for--what? More pink ribbons, I suppose. I think Komen should sign on with Christo to wrap every woman with pink ribbons. Then it won't matter if they have breast cancer or not, because you won't be able to see it. As long as you can't see it, it's not a problem. And when they die, the survivors can turn the ribbons into a shroud.

Oh, where was I? Yes, Caribou does sell coffee with pink ribbons with some portion going to the Komen million-dollar ad campaign. (Really. That's true about the million dollars.) Too late to help Komen herself; she's daid. You can guess what killed her. Anyway, I asked what percentage went to the foundation, and the barista told me that the company had pledged $100,000 and she asked if I wanted to buy a bag of coffee, and I said no, that as someone with breast cancer I support an organization that researches the cause. Which is true but makes no sense. You think someone with breast cancer would be focused on cure. But I guess I'm just a selfless cancer bitch. I regret that I spoke to her in a tight, aggressive and aggrieved tone. I think she felt sorry for me because she offered me a Caribou scratcher card (Winner gets a free trip to Costa Rica!) and when I wasn't a winner she kept taking out more and more cards and scratching them even though there were people in line behind me. Finally after a half dozen cards she gave up.

I've been to Costa Rica.. I went with N in the late 1980s. I didn't have a good time there, even though we saw monkeys and lizards and the beach, because I have trouble having a good time on vacation. I get struck with ennui and the meaningless of everything. When L and I travel it always has to be to a place with a coffee house so that I can work.

I will let an honorary cancer bitch, Canadian professor Samantha King, have the last words here, from her book, Pink Ribbons, Inc: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy: "As the Komen Foundation and its corporate sponsors continue to pump money into a research and education agenda that centers on uncritically promoting mammography, encouraging the use of pharmaceuticals to 'prevent' breast cancer, and avoiding any consideration of environmental links to the disease it becomes less clear whether they are not actually doing more harm than good...."