Dana: My name is Dana and I'm in remission from acute lymphocytic leukemia, which is a blood cancer. I was in the shower and I was washing my hair and washing my face, and I just felt this lymph node on the side of my chin. My gut was like, "This is something off." As the months progressed, we did a lot of tests. My blood tests were always normal. It wasn't until I had a biopsy on my lymph nodes that they saw a lymphoma. The next logical step and clinical step is to have a bone marrow biopsy. The biopsy showed I had leukemia. 98% of the cancer was in my bone marrow. That's a huge burden of disease on your body. I just remember seeing my life kind of flash before my eyes. When you hear something like that, you just immediately go to a really bad place.With blood cancers, it's very, very aggressive chemo, and within three rounds, it went from 98% to 0.25% in my marrow. In order to cure leukemia, you have to have a bone marrow transplant, and at this point, the transplant oncologist said, "If you are ready to do this, we're ready to do this." So my transplant was roughly 20 something odd days, and within a month, they told me that I was in remission and I had engrafted with my donor cells, which happened to be my sister. I was in remission for almost 10 months, but unfortunately I relapsed and my cancer came back to 85%. Thankfully, with another round of hefty chemo, I went into remission, but I don't see myself as out of the woods. Cancer might not be in my body, but cancer is a part of my life.Having a connection with yourself is huge in a recovery. You have to ensure that you're taking the time to relax. My day to day life is certainly not what it was. I always felt I was in control of my life. Now I kind of take a seat back and look at each day as what is that day going to present? Depending on how I feel, one of the best ways to start my day is to come to my Pilates studio. Movement for me, has always been a life form, and being able to get back on this machine has helped me more than I can say. There are days when I wake up and it's not all gravy, it's, "Okay, I'm feeling tired, my energy's low." So then I'd take my time, and I read a book, or maybe I go for a gentle walk with my dog. It's not necessary for me to do something rigorous every single day. When I first was diagnosed, I was single. You start to think, what does my future hold in terms of love, relationships? Where do I go from here? Harper: The first time I saw Dana, I was working the bar downstairs. She's beautiful. She had a bald head, dressed to the nines. I could see that there was... Dana had cancer. I didn't know much about cancer at that time, but it truly didn't matter to me. After you go through some life and you see things like that, you start to understand that stuff is, that is life. Dana: I love you. Harper: Love you too. Dana: My cancer journey to date, I like to look at it as I might not be where I want to be, but I'm not where I was. What does my hope for the future look like? To continue to embrace each day for what it is, because I could either sit here and reminisce on the old Dana, or I can look at where I am now and be thankful just for that. I look at the small wins and today's a small win.

All About Telehealth for Cancer Telehealth allows doctors to care for people virtually over a phone call, text message, or most commonly, video chat. Although some situations require an in-person visit, telehealth is a great option when you can't get to the doctor's office for your cancer. If you're new to telehealth, here's what you need to know. Medicare will cover telehealth visits just like in-person visits, but state Medicaid programs and private insurers vary, so confirm your coverage in advance. With telehealth, even though you're not in the doctor's office, your private health information is still covered by HIPAA, so it will remain confidential and secure. Although your oncologist can't give you a physical exam via telehealth, they can write prescriptions and offer quality care, especially if you prepare in advance. Before your telehealth appointment:- List any cancer symptoms, including dates and severity- Note any side effects from your cancer medications or therapies- Compile a list of your health conditions and all medications- Record your weight, as well as your vital signs if you own a thermometer, blood pressure monitor, or another device- Write down questions you have for your oncologist about any test results- Charge your computer or phone- Make sure your internet is reliable- Download any telehealth apps your specific provider may require- Find a quiet, private space to conduct the call- Be prepared with pen and paper or a note-taking app Turn to Healthgrades to connect with the right oncologist to treat cancer via telehealth. And share this video to spread the word!

Dr. Sabari: When I started treating patients, we initially started treatments with chemotherapy alone. There were really no other great options. Dr. Rohs: The changes that we've made in the treatment and the advances we've had, even in the past year or two, are amazing. The treatments are much more effective and more durable, as well as more tolerable. Dr. Lackey: The classic chemotherapy that people think of when they hear the term chemotherapy, doctors call that cytotoxic therapy. Cytotoxic means toxic to cells. Not just cancer cells, but all the cells in the body. Dr. Liaw: The tough thing with traditional chemotherapy is that, because it can affect both cancer cells as well as normal cells, that we do have a lot of potential issues with side effects. Dr. Lackey: But in this day and age, it's very exciting because we have additional therapies we can offer patients. Dr. Kazmi: Targeted therapies attack cancer at the level of the mutation. So, what turns a cancer on to grow and spread is usually a mutation or two or three. There are certain drugs that target those specific mutations that turn that on button on and stop it. Dr. Liaw: Targeted therapy's really revolutionized how we treat things like lung cancer, colorectal cancer, some skin cancers, without causing quite as much of the side effects that we traditionally ascribe to a classic chemotherapy. Dr. Rohs: Targeted therapies only work for patients with these genetic mutations. I wish we could be able to give this to everybody, but we have to make sure we're giving it to the right patient at the right time. Dr. Lackey: Now, the newest evolution of therapy is what's called immunotherapy. Dr. Sabari: Normally, our immune system is able to recognize and attack things that are foreign. Interestingly, cancer is able to fool the immune system to prevent it from recognizing it. With immunotherapy, we're able to remove the brakes from the immune system to then allow the immune system to better recognize and attack the cancer. Dr. Kazmi: Immunotherapy has the benefit over chemotherapy in that it doesn't give you the nausea, the vomiting, the hair loss; however, immunotherapy can have different side effects. Dr. Sabari: What we do worry about most is if we actually rev up the immune system to an extent where it can recognize and attack your own body, we worry about auto-immune or inflammatory conditions. But these side effects are rare, and actually, very well tolerated and they're very well treated. Dr. Kazmi: There are also new studies that show us that a combination of immunotherapy medicines with chemotherapy has a significant amount of synergy. There's also immunotherapy medications combined together with different types of immunotherapy to increase that synergy. Dr. Liaw: I think it's still a little bit too early for us to say that chemotherapy will be entirely phased out. If things like targeted therapy is, for whatever reason, not that effective, or if things like immunotherapy are not giving us the desired results, it's still important for us to have things like chemotherapy in our back pocket to be able to use when necessary. Dr. Sabari: I think over the next five to 10 years, we'll start to see more and more combinations of therapies, and I do hope that in my career, in my lifetime, we do see this disease cured.

Amanda: You hear that word. You hear “cancer” and the world sort of stops spinning. It feels like you're in an alternate reality. Amanda: My name is Amanda, and I have thyroid cancer. Yoohnee: I have kidney cancer. Michael: I have prostate cancer. Alexia: I have breast cancer. Teela: My name is Teela, and I am a cancer survivor. Yoohnee: Mentally and emotionally, I took care of myself by seeing a lot of friends, making sure that I spent a lot of quality time with people I love. Alexia: I'm actually a doctor, so I pretty much practice what I preach, in terms of taking care of myself. From the very beginning, I just took on an attitude of 'No matter what happens, I'm going to choose joy.' Like every day, I'm going to find something to be happy about. Michael: I tend to look at the world with a very, very full and positive perspective. Amanda: I looked online a little for other people who have been through similar things, and I just found that it was helpful knowing I wasn't alone. Alexia: Prayer has been a very big part of my journey. Teela: You know, there's the Serenity Prayer. Basically, be able to recognize the things which I have power over, and be able to change them, and recognize the things I don't have power over, and just let them go. Amanda: I am meditating a lot. Teela: Physically, I stay strong by working out. Michael: I play soccer every single week. I watch what I eat. Yoohnee: I slept a lot, and eating whatever I wanted, although it was pretty unhealthy, it was a way for me to feel like I was living my best life. Amanda: I love going on hikes. I'm just trying to do a lot of really healthy and stress-releasing things to kind of get me through until I'm feeling really good. Teela: What is something that I wish somebody had told me when I'd just been diagnosed? The biggest thing is you're gonna get hit by chemo brain, and you're gonna get discombobulated, and again, that is okay. Start writing things down. I always keep a little planner/notebook on me at all times. I also have a notation app on my phone. Michael: I smile a lot more now. You go out in the world and you're trying to infect other people with that goodness and with that positiveness. You get that in return. Amanda: My advice would be reach out to the people that you love, and lean on them. Alexia: As strong and independent as I am, this is not something that I could do alone, and nobody could do alone, so allow people to be there and be present for you, and acknowledge that you need help. Yoohnee: Also, sharing your story, if you can, without any harm to yourself can uplift your voice. And I think that's so important to have control of when you have an illness like this. Teela: You know, every day is very up and down, but all in all, what keeps me going right now is the promise of being able to get to live.

Dr. Subari: There are two major subtypes of lung cancer. The most common one is non-small cell lung cancer, and the second type of lung cancer that we see is a lot less common and is a more aggressive subtype called small cell lung cancer. Dr. G: We don't do surgery for small cell lung cancer. Usually, it's a combination of chemotherapy and radiation. Dr. Kazmi: Non-small cell lung cancer, if the cancer is early stage, surgery is the mainstay of the therapy. If, however, it's more advanced, sometimes surgery is not enough. When a cancer is metastatic, patients need systemic treatments, such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or targeted therapy. Dr. G: Targeted therapy is based on the idea that there are specific gene mutations that drive a person's cancer. If we can figure out what those gene drivers are for that particular patient's cancer, we can then find a drug that can then target that gene mutation. Dr. Rohs: One of the really nice things about these pills is that they are well-tolerated and they can get to disease that other treatments can't get to. Dr. Subari: If we're not able to identify a genetic abnormality that we can match with a pill, we're then going to talk to you about chemotherapy and/or immunotherapy. The way that we decide which one to use depends on something called PD-L1 that sits on the surface of the cancer cell, and if you have a high level of this PD-L1, we generally recommend immunotherapy first, and if a person has a low level, we're going to recommend chemotherapy and immunotherapy as the first treatment option. Dr. G: Chemotherapy is treatment basically that kills cancer cells, but it also kills the good cells. Dr. Kazmi: Chemotherapy tends to work really well for certain cancers. However, it has side effects on the body in terms of the blood counts, the hair, the weakness, so it's not a long-term, sustainable plan. Dr. Lackey: The newest evolution of therapy is what's called immunotherapy. Our immune system is probably the best tool we have to keep our bodies healthy. Question always was, why can't the person's immune system fight off the cancer? Dr. Subari: Cancer is able to fool the immune system to prevent it from recognizing it. With immunotherapy, we're able to move the disguise, remove the brakes from the immune system, to then allow the immune system to better recognize and attack the cancer. Dr. Kazmi: Immunotherapy comes in a variety of forms. The most common of these are called checkpoint inhibitors or PD-L1 inhibitors. They are the drugs that turn on the immune system and turn your T-cells on to go and attack cancer. Dr. Rohs: Immune therapy, one of the most amazing parts of it is that it's very tolerable. Many patients don't have many side effects. Sometimes, they're a little bit more tired, their appetite can be down, and they can have something called immune phenomena. Because we're using your own immune system to attack the cancer, occasionally the immune system gets a little confused, and it can attack your own body. Dr. Subari: I think this is an extremely exciting time in the treatment of people with lung cancers. Dr. Kazmi: Immunotherapy has been a beacon of hope that cancer has needed for decades. Dr. Rohs: The pace of discovery for lung cancer right now is so staggering. I think we really are coming into the era of personalized medicine where we can hopefully minimize treatments and maximize benefits for our patients and have them live longer and live better.

Dr. Sabari: Lung cancer is a tough diagnosis, especially lung cancer that starts in the lung and learns how to travel to another part of the body. We refer to that as stage 4 lung cancer. We're not able to cure stage 4 lung cancer, but we are able to treat it. Dr. Kazmi: We think of it as a chronic disease. You may be able to take breaks from therapies, but the disease is never quite gone, and so we think of it as something we have to contain. Dr. G: When a patient is going through treatment for lung cancer, I think the most important thing to keep in mind is mentally to stay positive. Dr. Rohs: I think the best way to stay mentally strong is actually to be vulnerable. When you come to a diagnosis like lung cancer, it's really important for you to utilize all of the resources available to you. Dr. Sabari: It's important to talk to your family and friends. Dr. Kazmi: I suggest patients see support groups or individual therapy. Sometimes talking with family is not enough. Dr. Lackey: I do tell patients they need to be as active as possible. Dr. G: Get some exercise if you can. Even light exercise like walking is very good for patients. Dr. Rohs: Eat well-rounded diets. Veggies, fruits, lean meats. Stay well-hydrated. Dr. G: If you need to, consult with a nutritionist. Dr. Lackey: If they're not taking a multivitamin, I ask they start doing that. Dr. Kazmi: It is important to avoid processed foods and a ton of sugar and caffeine. Dr. Lackey: It's very important that patients quit smoking. We don't want them to continue smoking and get another cancer in five years. Dr. Rohs: The healthier you are going into therapy, the healthier you are going to be during and after therapy. Dr. Sabari: The goal of any treatment is so that a patient or a person can get back to do the normal things that they love to do. So having an open line of communication with your physician and the team is critical. Dr. Rohs: Whenever I sit down with a patient to start a new therapy, we talk about the risks, the benefits, the alternatives, and really notably, the side effects that I expect may happen so they can keep an eye out for it. You have to be honest and open with me so I can do the best to care of you. Dr. Lackey: Take a notebook with you. I find that as soon as patients walk out the door, they think of five more questions in the car that they then forget when they call my office when they get home. Dr. Kazmi: Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer in the country. There is a lot of hope for lung cancer now and other cancers than there's ever been. Dr. Sabari: If you look at the overall survival or how long people live with lung cancer, we're doing better and better. Dr. Lackey: Personally, I hate cancer. So, the day that we can actually have a hundred percent cure for every patient is the day that I can take out that part of my business happily. Dr. Kazmi: I recommend patients always ask a lot of questions of their care team, always try to get a second opinion, and stay on top of their treatment options as best as they can.

Crispin: Hi. My name is Crispin. I was diagnosed with cancer in 2015. Michael: I'm Michael. I was diagnosed with cancer. Leta: I was first diagnosed in May of 2013. They determined it was melanoma. Crispin: I had these odd, crippling chest pains that went on for months on end, like, out of nowhere, I'd have what I thought was a heart attack. I went to go see doctors thinking it was some kind of heart problem or pulmonary problem. Michael: He came out after I had woken up, and he sat down next to me. I kept thinking, doctors don't sit down next to you. This isn't boding well. Crispin: I went through tons of tests, only to realize there were actually, in fact, tumors inside of my chest. It was metastatic melanoma, which is somewhere between a late stage 3, early stage 4 metastasized melanoma. Michael: You really didn't need to be a physician to recognize the ulcerated tumor as being cancerous. Leta: Take a step back and take a deep breath. Give it some space, because it's so terrifying, and it's so easy to rush in to treatment. Crispin: For two days, I was sad and I cried more than I will probably cry in my life combined moving forward. I was more angry than anything. I let that anger drive me. Leta: The first treatment option that I was given was surgery to remove the large tumor. Crispin: Two was chemo, and obviously the rates that they give you for chemo survival of this kind of thing are scary. Michael: Unfortunately for myself after five treatments, I was really starting to wonder what was going to kill me first: was it going to be the cancer, or was it going to be the chemotherapy? Crispin: And then three was the trial. Michael: He presented this possibility of something called immunotherapy. Crispin: I got my first infusion of the immunotherapies. I walked out of the hospital that night and I felt totally normal. Michael: The trial was a year long, so it was every other week. I would go down and have an infusion. Crispin: After a while, though, I was warned of this up front: the immunotherapies don't know if they're attacking good or bad things. You just hope they're attacking the bad things with the good. After two infusions, my liver got so bad, they pulled me off of infusion number three and number four. But they still scanned me, and the results were pretty strong, even with just two infusions. Michael: The best part of it was that after three months, they weren't finding the cancer any longer that had been in my liver. Crispin: He told me in my last checkup in November that I'm probably going to be able to live a normal life. Leta: I have had clean scans for almost three years now. Crispin: Part of it's just knowing what is out there, because you think chemo the minute you hear cancer. And it's not that anymore for a lot of advanced diseases. Leta: The most important thing that I learned was that it's okay to also ask for help. Knowing that all those people were rooting for me and my family made a world of difference. Crispin: Get on the phone. Call somebody who might know something more than you do. Michael: Be an advocate for yourself. Don't just necessarily sit back and let the doctor lead you from one thing to the next, but be aware of what they're doing and why they're doing it. Crispin: Everyone says it, it's kind of cliché, but just keep living your life however you can. Michael: One of the things I want to give people is a little bit of hope. Don't immediately think the worst. Try to be optimistic about it.

Dr. Sacher: The most positive thing about immunotherapy is that, in a subset of patients, it can really give them back the chance to have a durable response and a normal life. Dr. Arena: If I were to take someone who had advanced lung cancer, and I would use the best chemotherapies that I could have, the numbers are monotonously the same - a response rate that is only about 23 to 26%. I could use immunotherapy, and I will get a response rate of over 40%. That is a totally new game. Dr. Subramaniam: The quality of life in a patient treated with immunotherapy is much better than the quality of life while on chemotherapy. Dr. Sacher: And in fact, many patients will go on to have no real significant side effects from the treatment at all. Michael: I didn't have any kind of pains. I didn't have muscle aches, joint aches. I was back to normal. Crispin: I got my first infusion of the immunotherapies and I walked out of the hospital that night and I felt totally normal. Dr. Arena: And most importantly, now I have responses that can last a long, long time. Dr. Subramaniam: In a patient with newly diagnosed lung cancer, who starts on chemotherapy, the benefit lasts for anywhere from seven to nine months, and some chemotherapy drugs, possibly 10 months. Dr. Subramaniam: However, with immunotherapy, the response frequently lasts greater than a year. Dr. Sacher: I think that's something that we never really saw before in metastatic disease. And I think that is the really extraordinary thing about immunotherapy. Going forward, we really want to try to develop newer immunotherapies that can bring that benefit to more patients, in order to allow them to derive that benefit and hopefully avoid treatments that have worse toxicity profiles. Dr. Arena: I want both quantity and quality. Never one without the other. And if I can give a therapy that's much more resilient, much more able to be tolerated, and it works better, it doubles the response rates, it makes people have a progression-free survival much, much longer, wow. That's the new era.

I was first diagnosed in May of 2013. They determined it was melanoma. I noticed that I had a big, lumpy bruise on the back of my leg. They did an MRI, and they initially weren't sure what kind of mass it was. But once they did surgery to remove it and did pathology on it, they determined it was melanoma. They knew that it had already metastasized. It metastasized to my small intestines and my lungs. The conversation with myself was to really not get my hopes up, based on the prognosis and everything that I'd seen and read about stage 4 melanoma. The prospect didn't look very good for long-term survival. My brother had actually been diagnosed with leukemia, I don't know, three or four weeks before my diagnosis. My family was pretty overwhelmed with that, so I actually kept the news to myself for a few weeks. I found an article about some new immunotherapy options online, and that took me to a search for clinical trials. Dr. Atkins explained that I would get infusions of two different immunotherapy drugs. They happened, in the beginning, in two week intervals and then moved to three week intervals. The first scan was, I believe, six to eight weeks after the first treatment. The tumors were already shrinking at that point. When I started seeing good results, it almost felt a little foolish to believe them. The more good results I got, the easier it was to start sort of relaxing into that sense of hope that I would actually get better. Sometimes you're supposed to have a brave face, and you're not always going to have a brave face, and that's okay, too. I mean, I certainly had a will that I wanted to live and to thrive. I'm married and I have two daughters, and I couldn't imagine them growing up without me. I wanted to be there for my family. I have had clean scans for almost three years now. I'm back teaching. I teach four year olds. They're very active, so I have to be pretty active too, but overall, you know, things are pretty great.

Dr. Arena: What immunotherapy is doing is unleashing the dogs. Dr. Sacher: Immunotherapy works by helping your body's own immune system recognize and attack cancer cells. Dr. Arena: It's allowing your own body to take charge. Dr. Sacher: Your body's own immune system, as part of its natural function, recognizes abnormal cells and attempts to get rid of them. In a patient that has cancer, we frequently would see that their own immune cells were standing by and not really attacking cancer cells, even though cancer cells are the most abnormal cells you could find in someone's body. That, for a long time, really puzzled oncologists. Dr. Markman: Why is it that these cells are not helping to kill the cancer? They're there, but they're not doing anything. Well, perhaps it's not that the immune system isn't ready to go. It's not that the cells aren't there, but somehow they're blocked from working. Dr. Sacher: PD-L1 is a protein that is normally expressed on your body's cells in order to reduce inflammation, essentially a signal that your body's normal cells can use in order to say, "I'm a normal cell. Don't attack me." Cancer cells can co-opt that mechanism by expressing extremely high levels of that protein. Dr. Arena: And what it does is that these ligands will attach onto the activated killer T-cell as if it was a lock-and-key mechanism and turns off the motor. It stuns them. Dr. Sacher: Essentially, taking a normal mechanism that your body uses to regulate inflammation and use it as a shield against an anti-tumor immune response. Dr. Markman: The observation led to the development of a group of very exciting drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors. Dr. Arena: It almost sounds like something out of "Star Wars." It blocks that PD-L1 and PD-L2 from attaching into the activated T-cell, almost like sealing wax that would go over the key holder, let's say in your ignition of your car, so that your key could not get into that ignition key holder. Dr. Sacher: And allowing your body's own white blood cells to recognize, attack and ideally, eliminate cancer cells. So, they really serve to unmask a tumor and allow your body's immune cells to recognize it. Dr. Arena: It's saying, "Hey, listen. We have a foreign body in our system. We are going to be on the attack." Immunotherapy is much more subtle. It's allowing your own body to take charge. That is a totally new game. That is bringing everything into overtime.

Dr. Arena: If we talk about the effectiveness of immunotherapy in lung cancer, you have to know a little bit about where are we now, or where were we? Dr. Sacher: Immunotherapy is the first class of agents that I've seen within lung cancer that really offer the promise of a durable, long-term response to therapy in patients with metastatic disease. Dr. Subramaniam: There are two major types of lung cancer. Dr. Arena: One is called small cell cancer of the lung, which occupies about 15% of all lung cancers ... Dr. Sacher: ... and tends to be more heavily associated with smoking. Dr. Arena: And then there's non-small cell cancer of the lung. Dr. Subramaniam: And that may or may not be associated with smoking. Dr. Sacher: Small cell cancer tends to grow very quickly and very explosively, but also is very sensitive to traditional treatments like chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Non-small cell lung cancer also responds to those treatments, but perhaps is not as sensitive. Dr. Arena: The vast majority of cases of non-small cell cancer of the lung are what we call adenocarcinomas of the lung. Adenocarcinomas of the lung, there are about four or five different mutations which are so very important, because we have medicines, actually pills, that can be used for these specific mutations. The other most common is something called squamous cell cancer of the lung. We have multiple mutations in squamous cell cancers, and we don't have any medicines for them. So when I see a patient with non-small cell cancer of the lung, the first thing I want to know, is this a squamous cell cancer? Is this an adenocarcinoma of the lung? Dr. Sacher: Lung cancer is an extremely aggressive malignancy. And for the majority of patients, it's diagnosed at a late stage. Dr. Arena: And there are really no screening types of tests that one can do that really can make this an early diagnosis. Dr. Sacher: The use of immunotherapy in lung cancer really is defined by specific biomarkers. What a biomarker is, is just a test that we perform either on a patient's tumor or sometimes on their blood in order to determine what treatment will be most effective for them. Dr. Subramaniam: Markers in the tumors of patients that will give us a clue as to whether immunotherapy will be effective in that patient or not. Dr. Sacher: We discovered that the expression of a protein called PD-L1 on the surface of tumor cells helps us to identify patients whose cancers are likely to respond to immunotherapy. Dr. Arena: So I'm going to ask the pathologist, "Can you measure, on that cancer cell, the PD-L1?" And they can, within a few days, come back, "Yes, this tumor has got tons of that." Dr. Sacher: Patients whose tumors express that high level are the exact patients who should be treated first with immunotherapy as opposed to starting with chemotherapy. I think it's important for patients to be cognizant of this because the testing for that biomarker really is so key to directing their care, which sometimes is immunotherapy, but sometimes it's not. The most positive thing about immunotherapy is that, in a subset of patients, it can really give them back a chance to have a durable response and a normal life. And that remission from their cancer can actually last years in the best-case scenario.

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Breast Cancer 1. Life expectancy for certain breast cancers has nearly tripled.Thanks to revolutionary new treatments, almost half of patients with stage IV breast cancer live more than five years after diagnosis. 2. Doctors analyze your tumor to find the best treatment.Your tumor reveals details about how your cancer grows, which helps doctors determine the best treatment for you. 3. It’s not necessarily all in the family.While family history is a risk factor, only 15% of breast cancer patients have relatives who’ve also had it. 4. Breast cancer survivors are the largest group of cancer survivors in the U.S.There are almost 3 million breast cancer survivors in the country, and that number is growing. 5. Finding the right specialist can mean a world of difference.Turn to Healthgrades.com to connect with the best oncologist for your breast cancer. Share this video to help educate others about breast cancer!

Kavita:I did not say the word cancer until several months into my treatment. I could barely write it in a text message. It took me a while to work up to say that word, the C word, the ugly C word. And now I'm in a place I can say it. Cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer. I can say you and shout you from the mountain tops because you will not get me. Anna:I was 27 years old and a one-year newlywed when I found a lump myself, while I was taking a shower. I didn't have any family history of cancer, and within a week I was diagnosed with triple positive breast cancer. And my whole world fell apart. Kavita:I was in denial immediately because I refused to believe that these were my results because my body would not have done this to me. So I refused to believe that any of it was true or that it was actually happening to me. You don't just hear cancer and get to sit down. It's time to get up and get moving. It was a port, MRI, chemo, breast surgeon, plastic surgeon, all these different medications, fertility, and that was the darkest and the hardest part, the diagnosis, and just getting started. Monique:When I found the lump, I did a biopsy. It actually came back benign, but my left breast became very heavy and it also started to hurt. The doctor said, "Let's have one more biopsy and then we'll take it from there." And it came back benign again. So I said, "Okay, but it needs to be removed because it hurts and it's growing." She removed it and she called me a week later and was like, "Okay, the papilloma we removed was benign, but there was a smaller mass behind it and that was developing cancer." Kavita:As a patient, you are going to be your greatest advocate. Many people are just so confused and bogged down by the diagnosis, they don't realize that you have the power to pick your provider team at any point. It's your body. It's your choice. It's your life. It's your cancer. It's your treatment. Anna:I'm almost six years out from cancer. So while cancer is not an everyday part of my life now, emotionally it still plays a role in the way that I cope, in the way that I have learned to navigate the world. When treatment's over, your support system wants to celebrate you being done with cancer. So they say things like, "Oh, the cancer's gone, you're done. Let's get back to normal." But the reality is for the person that's been through it, there is no normal. I am never going to be Anna that I was pre-cancer. It doesn't mean I can't be happy. Doesn't mean I'm not going to find joy again, but I'm a changed person. Kavita:So I've been in remission for a few months now, and I'm very excited about that. And I am learning right now what it means to be what we call a breast cancer survivor. Monique:I am currently in chemotherapy. I'm the only one that's currently going through it. So at the end of the day, I really look like this. So, in the beginning it was really hard to accept the losing the hair, but now I just embrace it.

M. Michele Blackwood, MD:Hope is really important. First of all, you have to know that God forbid you get a diagnosis of cancer, particularly breast cancer, many, many, many breast cancers are not just treatable but can be curable. Alex Hayes:Can you explain to me the difference between early breast cancer, advanced breast cancer, and other types? M. Michele Blackwood, MD:Early breast cancer means that the tumor is small, it hasn't spread to lymph nodes, it hasn't spread to other parts of the body. Late diagnosis of breast cancer is that the breast cancer is large, more than five centimeters, so more than the width of your hand, and it's spread to lymph nodes, it could spread to the chest wall, it could spread to the nipple, it could spread to the skin. Late breast cancer takes a lot more work to get rid of it. Alex Hayes:Diagnosing breast cancer early, is that in and of itself something positive that a person should feel optimistic about? Dr. Nina Watson:Yes, most definitely. The key is what we call early detection. Early detection means finding a breast cancer when it's as small as possible and when it's the most treatable, which is actually the goal of screening mammograms. Because oftentimes if we're finding it when there's some type of symptom, those cancers are larger. Mammogram allows us to see the tissue to find those cancers when they are small and make the diagnosis then. Alex Hayes:So for early breast cancer what are some treatment options and how have they evolved over the course of your career? M. Michele Blackwood, MD:So it used to be the mastectomy was the gold standard of breast cancer treatment. Thankfully, that's not the case anymore. There's so many options available to a patient such as maybe no treatment depending on how old she is. Maybe it's just a pill. Maybe it's a lumpectomy. Sometimes we add radiation to it, sometimes we add chemotherapy. Sometimes we do very extensive surgeries, but there's a lot of different types of treatments based on the type of breast cancer that a woman or a man has. Alex Hayes:What would you tell somebody who's just received this diagnosis and they feel very alone? Dr. Nina Watson:First I would say to take things one day at a time. It can be very overwhelming, and it's okay to allow yourself to have those feelings. The second bit of advice I would give is to reach out to a support system, you don't have to be on this journey alone. Alex Hayes:In addition to the range of treatment options available, what else is giving you hope about the future of treating early breast cancer? M. Michele Blackwood, MD:I would say every six months there's a major breakthrough in breast cancer. We have more and more treatments available that are changing lives, that are extending lives, that are getting rid of cancer. I love the idea that you can take a patient who's facing stage two, three, or even four breast cancer and turn around their lives and maybe get them to forget about cancer. Sometimes when they come to see me afterwards years later and there's a small scar in their breast and they say, well which breast was it again? And I said you mean that big thing that we had to deal with five, 10 years ago you can't remember which breast it was? I love that.