Teresa Heinz says she's fighting breast cancer

[Stinky The Clown]

BOSTON — Teresa Heinz says she is being treated for breast cancer discovered through mammography and argues that younger women should continue undergoing the tests despite a federal panel's recent recommendation to reduce their frequency.

The 71-year-old wife of the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry, of Massachusetts, told The Associated Press that the cost of mammography is far lower than the physical and personal tolls women ages 40 to 60 face if their cancer goes undetected early and they later have to be treated with aggressive chemotherapy.

"Chemotherapy is serious. It also costs a lot of money. It's very painful. And it's very destructive of people's — most people's — lives for a while, anyway. So why put people through that instead of just having a test that's done, and it's done?" Heinz told the AP during an interview this week. "So that's why I was so upset about that decision of this panel."

She recalled nurses in a hospital where she was receiving a magnetic resonance imaging procedure, or MRI, being "so livid" when they heard the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommend last month that women start receiving mammograms at age 50, rather than the long-standing practice of 40.

>snip<

More here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gSlEyIlyRzEbDZkRWbVe4kxaVMjAD9COR5300


Please refrain inane from comments like "Well, at least she has good insurance". She's a good person and I wish her nothing but a good outcome.

[OmahaBlueDog]

1. I still say she would have been a helluva First Lady

Get well soon, Teresa

[Berry Cool]

2. She's still simplifying the situation too much.

Early detection is not the whole shooting match when it comes to breast cancer, as anyone who really looks into it will soon discover. It MAY mean catching a cancer before it spreads elsewhere, which might mean a woman doesn't have to undergo chemo--or it might not. It depends on the individual situation. In any case, it doesn't guarantee successful treatment--it just provides more options. But it also finds a lot of tumors that might never really be life-threatening and results in expensive treatment for removal of those.

Going by the "livid" reactions of a group of nurses isn't necessarily the way to form a decision.

That being said, though, I certainly wish her all the best in the world and that she makes a full recovery with no recurrences.

Edited to add that the article says "They said, 'We've taken all these years to teach women to do preventive mammograms, and now look at this,'" Heinz said." Ouch! These are NURSES, and they believe that mammograms PREVENT breast cancer? What the ??????? Mammograms don't prevent breast cancer. They can't possibly do that. All they can do is find what is already there. I sure hope she was misinterpreting or misquoting them, because they don't sound like very knowledgeable health care professionals if they think that mammograms prevent breast cancer. The most they can do is find it before it spreads elsewhere.