Every person quoted in a reporter’s story makes an impact both on the story and the journalist, but some make more of an impact than others.
Patricia Stoop, the occupational therapist I spoke to for an article about concussions, is just such a person.
The best word to describe her is perky. She is pixie-like, a doppelganger for the skater Elizabeth Manley. She is incredibly funny, obviously smart, knows more about the brain than anyone else I have met, short of a brain surgeon – and she is living with metastatic breast cancer.
That’s the cancer you don’t want, Stoop explained, and the one you don’t hear much about. It is breast cancer that has spread to different parts of the body, the bones, liver, lungs or brain. In Stoop, it spread to her liver.
Average life expectancy is 26 months, Stoop said. She is on month 29.
She goes for chemo every three weeks, and currently, she shows no evidence of the disease. The chemotherapy lays her flat some days and then she is back to 10-kilometre runs, caring for her teen children and working. She is applying to do her masters in rehab sciences.
See, she’s perky.
She calls herself “a walking pharmacy of meds,” though, to manage the side effects of her treatments.
Of the 24,400 women who will be told they have breast cancer this year across Canada, five per cent will develop metastatic disease this year. Over time, approximately 30 per cent of those diagnosed with earlier stages will later develop metastatic breast cancer, according to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. Yet only three to five per cent of cancer research funds is put towards this type of cancer.
Say what? That makes no sense.
October is breast cancer action month and while there are fundraising and awareness campaigns, Stoop said that most women in Canada with her type of breast cancer feel isolated. There is such a focus on curing cancer when for many women, there is no cure, Stoop said.
With all the attention paid to cancer, no one dealing with the ridiculous disease should feel left out.
Oct. 13 is national metastatic breast cancer awareness day. Let’s raise awareness and advocate for existing funds be channeled towards research into this type of disease.
