Breast Cancer

Remembering Laura Ziskin

June 13, 2011 at 1:56 pm, by Ladies' Lounge

It’s a sad day at the LHJ offices, and for breast cancer survivors and advocates everywhere. Last night, one of the recipients of our 2011 Do Good Awards, Laura Ziskin, passed away after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 61.

Ziskin, who produced such modern movie classics as Pretty Woman and Spider Man, was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2004 and helped co-found the cancer fighting organization, Stand Up 2 Cancer (SU2C). She raised millions of dollars—and worldwide awareness—in the fight against the deadly disease.

When we interviewed Ziskin last spring, she reiterated to LHJ readers that “Cancer is everybody’s cause.” She also told us that SU2C will “only really meet its goal when someone discovers a treatment that’s going to make a difference in a cancer patient’s life. Who knows, maybe that life will be mine.”

You can read more about SU2C and Ziskin’s brave fight at the Stand Up 2 Cancer site.

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The C Word: Making Fun of Breast Cancer

March 30, 2011 at 8:19 am, by Amelia Harnish

First, Pam Murphy was a comedian. Then she got breast cancer. Now she’s merged the two for a one-woman comedy show about her life as a cancer survivor. Since opening last October at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (founded by Amy Poehler and friends) in New York City, Time Out New York named it the best solo show of 2010.

“The C Word” is only a half-hour long, but Murphy packs in more than a handful of hilarious characters drawn from her experience: the stoic doctor who lays out her treatment plan like a high-school football coach with a dry erase board. The friend who won’t shut up about the miracle “cure” she found on the Internet. The subway rider who refuses to give up her seat for the bald lady. And of course, the friend who tries to relate but just can’t—“My aunt had breast cancer. Well, she wasn’t really my aunt, but she was so close to my mom we called her my aunt, you know? We never saw her during her chemo. It was awful. But anyway, what I’m saying is, I totally get it.”

She also makes fun of herself, playing a counselor who develops a tailored coping plan just for her: “You’ll be able to lie around, eat a bunch of crap, watch TV, wallow in self pity and everyone you know is going to think that you are a brave little soldier, so that’s a win, win, win, win, win!” Also, check out this scene where she portrays a first date after breast cancer for another hilarious example.

“I don’t portray myself in the best light, either, because I didn’t write the show to say, ‘Look at me, I’m such a brave person,’” she says. “I just wanted to say, look, this experience sucks. Let’s talk about it.”

Murphy was aiming for honesty, and she totally nailed it, while still managing to get lots of laughs. She skipped the soul-searching and just focused on the reality—breast cancer isn’t fun. But she made it through, and now she’s making it funny.

Right now she’s doing two shows in Los Angeles at the UCB Theatre in Hollywood, and she’ll be back in New York City for two shows in April. But stay tuned because the show might be coming to a college near you very soon. Pam says she’s in the process of booking a tour of campuses across the country.

Read on for more of my talk with Murphy about her bout with breast cancer, why she decided to write about it and what she wants other survivors to know.

Read more

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Top 10 Health Searches for 2010

December 8, 2010 at 2:09 pm, by Amelia Harnish

I can’t remember what life was like before search engines—I turn to the Internet for answers about everything, even my health. Like most people with a computer, at the first sign of symptoms, I’m usually hunting down my own diagnosis before I’ve even thought about calling the doctor.

“People turn to the web for quick answers,” says Robert Glatter, M.D., a New York-based emergency room physician. “A lot of times when people come see me they already have an idea of what’s wrong with them.”

So what health woes were on our minds this year? As part of their Year in Review coverage, the folks at Yahoo! parsed data from billions of searches for the top 10 health-related terms for 2010, and the results might surprise you.

The list:

1. Pregnancy, 2. Diabetes, 3. Herpes, 4. Shingles, 5. Lupus, 6. Depression, 7. Breast cancer, 8. Gall bladder, 9. HIV, 10. Fibromyalgia

Pregnancy is consistently at the top, says Vera Chan, a Yahoo! web trend analyst, but it’s not just moms-to-be doing the digging. “Early symptoms of pregnancy” and “pregnancy tests” were among the top search phrases, which are likely from women concerned that they might be pregnant.

“Pregnancy also figures in reality shows these days—16 and Pregnant, I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant—and celebrity pregnancies spur their own round of queries,” Chan says.

While diabetes and pregnancy aren’t all that surprising, how did herpes get into the top three? According to the latest numbers from the CDC, prevalence of the herpes simplex virus remains high at about 16 percent. Plus, many people are uncomfortable discussing their sexual health with family, friends and even their doctors, so they turn to the web, Dr. Glatter says. The same goes for HIV coming in at number nine.

“I think there’s also an increased sense of the need for testing, so that may be why people are searching for it,” he adds.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, between 75% and 80% of all Internet users have looked online for health information.  But Chan says that women conduct health searches more often than men, which may be why diseases more common in women, like lupus and fibromyalgia, found their way into the top 10.

Dr. Glatter was stunned that autism didn’t make it onto the list this year. What do you think—anything else missing?

Photos by rcv3 and Mahalie

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Breast Cancer and Hormone Therapy

October 21, 2010 at 10:50 am, by Julie Bain

You may have seen the headlines this week about a new study showing that postmenopausal women who take hormone therapy have a greater risk of getting invasive breast cancer—and of dying from it. If you’re one of those women trying to keep the crazy hot flashes at bay, try not to overreact. “Based on this information there is no need to flush your estrogen down the toilet,” says Lauren Streicher, M.D. (right), assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Dr. Streicher, who will be on the Ladies’ Home Journal Medical Advisory Board (to be officially announced soon), says that the media often gets ahold of studies before doctors do. So doctors like her have to scramble to read the research, and make sense of it, before their phones start ringing with patients anxious for answers. But the bottom line, she says, is “if you look carefully at the numbers, it is not as significant as the screeching headlines make it sound.”

She wrote a great blog about it for the Dr. Oz site. So if you want a voice of reason on this subject, read it here.

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Do Good: Brushing for the Cure

October 18, 2010 at 3:12 pm, by Megan Weiss

October is, of course, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It seems like you can get almost everything in ribbon-pink these days (which is great because the products contribue to a good cause!) but we especially like this adorable scrub brush from Boston Warehouse. (How often do you get excited about a scrub brush!?) A portion of the sales from this Brushing Beauty Breast Cancer Brush (try saying that 5 times fast) will go to Susan G Komen for the Cure. The company even made a $15,000 donation guarantee to Susan G Komen in support of its promise to save lives and end breast cancer forever. Nice!

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Hoda Kotb: War, Cancer and Kathie Lee?

October 17, 2010 at 3:34 pm, by Julie Bain

Are you a fan of Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb and their freewheeling fourth hour of the Today Show? I am. I became a Kathie Lee fan years ago, when she sat next to Regis and wasn’t afraid or embarrassed to talk about anything. My dad loved her, and when I moved in with my parents for a while in the ’90s to help take care of him while he was ill, the show became a cheerful morning ritual for Dad and me.

So I was happy when I heard in 2008 that this old friend was joining Today. But who was Hoda Kotb (right)? I didn’t know then. But I feel I know her now, thanks to her new book, Hoda: How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer and Kathie Lee.

The book is a fun read, with gripping tales of her travels around the world to cover stories for Dateline, from war-torn Baghdad to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And there’s plenty of entertaining inside scoop about getting to know Kathie Lee and finding their groove together for the show.

But the part that really got me was the raw, emotional recounting of what she calls “the bad year.” It was 2007, “the year my body and my heart broke at the same time,” as she describes it. She was 42, happily married, fit and healthy—or so she thought. “I had finally balanced my personal life and career, a real challenge for me up to that point.” She had always wanted kids. But in January of that year, she learned that her husband had been deceiving her—and that she had breast cancer. Read more

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My Beef With Sex and the City 2

June 3, 2010 at 10:52 am, by Julie Bain

I was lucky enough to attend the premiere of Sex and the City 2 at Radio City in New York last week. The red carpet was lined with paparazzi and crazed fans, the stars looked glamorous and almost every scene in the film got raucous cheers from the passionate audience. I had a blast. Sure, the clothes, the locations, the action were all completely over the top. But hey, it’s been a long recession, and the movie provided pure escapism, just like Fred and Ginger did during the Great Depression. Still, one thing about the film bothered me, as it did my friend Courtney Bugler.

Courtney had just turned 29 four years ago when she heard the bad news: she had breast cancer. But she fought it hard. That included having her ovaries removed, although first she preserved some of her eggs. She suffered the symptoms of instant menopause, but later had one of her frozen embryos implanted. Now, four years later, she’s healthy and has a 1-year-old baby boy named Aidan, along with her husband Alan and four very large dogs. She has also become an advocate for young breast cancer survivors and runs the Atlanta affiliate of the Young Survival Coalition. I invited her to write a guest blog here and explain why one aspect of the movie really ticked her off. Read more

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