Just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has visited our website and supported our letter writing campaign to support the funding of Herceptin in Ontario. In case you missed it, there was another article in the Globe and Mail today on this issue. Lots of finger pointing and avoidance behaviour! Check it out.
Personally, I'm very concerned that Minister Matthews and Cancer Care Ontario isn't acknowledging the new thinking around cancer - that biology trumps tumour size!! My grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer in the early 1980s with a huge tumour. She had surgery and radiation and was fine. My mom was diagnosed in 1988 with a tiny tumour - 0.5 cms (same as Jill) and she is the one that died of breast cancer four years after diagnosis. In the 1980s, we didn't know as much about the biology of tumours. We didn't know that a small tumour could be deadlier than a large one. We know this now!
As we learn more and more about breast cancer, new classification systems have emerged and continue to emerge. That’s the purpose of continuing to fund research – to make progress, to advance treatment. There is increasing interest in the genetic or molecular features of the cancer, which are now considered to be even more important than how a breast cancer looks (old school classification). What's so exciting is that these features such as whether the cancer is hormone sensitive (estrogen or progesterone) or if it has too much of a known gene as HER2 give indication about which treatments the cancer will respond to!!....Science has shown Jill's cancer will respond best with Herceptin. Size doesn't matter. It's an aggressive form. It's very frustrating that Cancer Care Ontario and our Ontario Government is clinging to an arbitrary number on this issue.
We are going to continue to push for this change. We have requested a meeting with Minister Matthews. Waiting to hear back from her office and will be “following up” for sure. The media is helping to turn up the heat on this issue and we are going to see what we can do to help on that front too. This needs to be resolved…urgently.
Stay tuned and thank you again to everyone who is helping.
MJ
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