Pathways to Peace

Area support systems bring new hope to Northern Virginians with breast cancer.

by Alexandra Scarfone

One of the most common cancers in women in the United States, breast cancer claims the lives of more than 40,000 women—with Virginia being one of the states with the highest rates of people dying from the disease, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While this may be true, many hospitals, centers and foundations are fighting on the front lines of this battle.

With this month being one where the nation celebrates one of the many ways in which the men and women battling the disease are recognized annually, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we took a look at what Northern Virginia hospitals and other organizations are doing for our loved ones who are fighting for their lives.

Courtesy of the Cherry Blossom Foundation

One local man knows all too well the pain that a family suffers when a woman they love battles, and loses the fight to breast cancer. Struck with the devastating loss of his wife, Cheryl, to breast cancer in 2003, Middleburg resident Jim Atkins knew there had to be some way to follow through on her last wish: “When you can, give back.”

If discovered a year earlier, Cheryl may not have died, explains Atkins, but she missed a mammogram. “I lived through it,” says Atkins. “I was right there, through everything. I do this so another husband doesn’t experience the grief. I watched my own cherry blossom die, and so did I.”

Atkins, the chairman of the board of the Cherry Blossom Breast Cancer Foundation—a foundation he founded in 2007 with the help of Sandi—one of Cheryl’s friends and Atkins’ current wife—and two other women (Mary Jo Jackson and Lizanne Driskill)—stresses the importance of detection and prevention, in addition to treatment, education and elimination, which are the goals of the foundation.

“We spend 90 percent of the grant money we are awarded on detection and treatment plans, specifically for patients in Loudoun and Fauquier Counties,” says Atkins. “Instead of raising money and sending it nationally, we keep it local, so we really know the women and the results our money provides.”

On Oct. 9, the foundation is hosting its 5th Annual Cherry Blossom Walk and 5K Run for Breast Cancer, which will take place in Leesburg, Middleburg and Warrenton.

Atkins anticipates over 1,000 participants over the three areas and over $100,000 in revenue, and says the event currently has over $83,000 in sponsorships.

Maimah Karmo, the founder of The Tigerlily Foundation, a Northern Virginia leader in raising awareness, says Tigerlily provides educational seminars throughout NoVA at homes, businesses and schools to provide support, empower young women and raise awareness of the disease.

In September, the foundation hosted the Young Women’s Breast Health Day on The Hill, an event that engaged policy makers, members of Congress, the media and young women who have been affected by the disease to discuss any and all pertinent issues.

While Atkins and Karmo make a place for their own personal, grassroots way of helping others, many in the area do so by walking for their survivors during the annual Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure, which took place in Washington, D.C. at the end of last month. What started as a promise to a sister, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation is leading the nation in breast cancer awareness and funding (bringing in more than $1.9 billion since 1982).

Bigger Scale

But it is not just those who have thrown their personal lives into the fight, finding their own niche in trying to eradicate the disease. Northern Virginia has a large role in helping to make people aware of the disease and providing the support and information that patients need through organized healthcare centers.

One leader in the cause, The Inova Breast Care Institute is a national organization made up of a network of breast care specialists working together to provide the best possible treatment. They have treatment facilities at five of the Inova Health System’s hospitals in Northern Virginia.

For one breast cancer survivor, Kim Campbell, 37, the Inova Institute’s team of doctors and specialists, as well as the programs she was connected with, helped her overcome an extremely difficult time in her life, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer on June 22, 2010.

Courtesy of Inova Health System/Media Services

Dr. Mark Venturi is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, as well as a micro-vascular surgeon, specializing in breast reconstruction. According to Venturi, there are new procedures and reconstruction options that are becoming available to women.

“There are a lot of support groups … I went to Life With Cancer, which provided everything, including a special yoga class I needed because I’d had to have my lymph nodes removed, so I have to wear a sleeve when I exercise because of swelling,” Campbell says.

Campbell discovered the breast cancer at an especially difficult time in her life; she had just given birth to her second child. She says the support groups allowed her to ask questions about things she went through that did not register as well when she was receiving tons of information at once.

According to the medical director for the Inova Cancer Services, Dr. Kirsten Edmiston, there are many types of programs and support-based organizations available that satisfy the specific needs of patients.

Through Inova, patients are provided with a “breast navigator,” a registered nurse who has additional training with breast cancer patients. They help their patients navigate the system on an individualized basis and answer any specific questions the patient may have.

Campbell emphasizes that when she was going through chemotherapy, radiation, a mastectomy and plastic surgery, she was always presented with all options and stresses that it is important for people to realize that they have options when going through treatment.

Many of the organizations available are tailored to specific groups of people. For example, Inova’s breast navigators are all multi-lingual, with Spanish as a second language, in order to reach out and provide support to minorities.

Dr. John Williams works on the staff at Fauquier Health and is the medical director of The Breast Center at the Lake Manassas Cancer Center, a partnership of Prince William and Fauquier Hospitals. He emphasizes the importance of specific patient-centered treatment. Like Inova, Williams says their facility takes a team approach, bringing together doctors from various specialties to deal with each individual case.

“We do a lot of follow-up with our patients, trying to make sure they complete all their therapies after the breast cancer treatment,” says Williams. “We really try to add a personal touch and give our patients the most support we can.”

Courtesy of Inova Health System/Media Services

Williams also shares that he hosts a lecture with a radiologist every October at Fauquier Health about how to determine whether or not a person is at high risk for breast cancer and how to manage that.

There is also a genetic counseling program through Inova that men and women who have a family history of the disease can attend to learn more.

“We have a master’s-prepared genetic counselor who sits down and goes through the person’s family history and weighs the risks and benefits of genetic testing, and whether or not they have a genetic disposition for breast cancer,” says Edmiston.

The high costs of medical treatment may leave some who are suffering at a loss for what they can do. Inova takes this into account and offers a clinic for low-income patients. There are two clinics in Northern Virginia, located in Reston and Arlington, and they have two fellowship-trained breast surgeons who provide treatment and care for these patients.

The director of leadership giving for the Inova Health System Foundation, Melanie Wolfe, works closely with the Inova Breast Cancer Institute to help raise awareness about the disease and the foundation. The nonprofit organization relies on its donors and individuals in the community who want to give back to the program, and Wolfe says the Inova team is grateful that they have the support of the community so they can offer the best treatment.

“Inova is committed to individualized medicine,” Wolfe says. “It’s all about looking at the patient’s individual genetic makeup to determine the best treatment strategies.”

Through Inova, patients are also connected to area plastic surgeons who specialize in reconstructive procedures.

Campbell’s surgeon, Dr. Mark Venturi, says it’s important to be able to offer the patient every option for breast reconstruction because reconstruction depends entirely on the patient and “no one best option is best for everyone.”

One common reconstruction option is to get tissue expanders during treatment, which later become implants once the patient has finished treatment.

Another option involves using the patient’s own tissue from elsewhere on the body to reconstruct the breast.

“Some people don’t have enough abdominal skin and fat to reconstruct the size of the breast, which in that case, makes the tissue expanders and implants a better option,” says Venturi.

Breast cancer, due to the nature of where it forms, is known as a women’s cancer. However, men can also be at risk for the disease. According to Edmiston, who also established the Inova Breast Cancer Institute, about one out of every 400 breast cancer patients is a man. While the numbers are low, Edmiston says Inova provides the same options for counseling and genetic testing for men as they do for women.

When Edmiston established the institute, she says she really wanted to bring together all the physicians who provide care for a person with breast cancer and make the treatment truly patient-centered. The institute is constantly researching new and better methods of treatment, whether it’s treatment for people who have already been diagnosed or identifying ways to potentially prevent breast cancer, she says.

Dr. Nicholas Robert, a medical oncologist who chairs the cancer and research committees of Inova Fairfax Hospital’s Cancer Center, has done extensive research in breast cancer treatment and works closely with breast cancer patients, including Campbell.

He is currently researching cutting-edge methods of what he refers to as “individualized care.” From a scientific perspective, this refers to looking at the specific biology of the person with cancer and finding the abnormal parts.

“It’s still very premature and in the early stages of research, but we are hopeful that this kind of individualized treatment will allow us to eventually look at the individual tumor and provide care based on that,” Robert says.

Dr. Robert has treated many different types of breast cancer patients, including patients who brought up issues with fertility. He says it is still possible for a woman to have children after chemotherapy with options such as preserving and freezing a woman’s eggs or storing her embryos.

The Life With Cancer program offers counseling and support groups for women who are exploring options of fertility during or post-treatment. Through this program patients can receive support through a counselor or through other patients going through similar things.

Edmiston says Life With Cancer also offers exercise and education programs, as well as counseling specifically tailored to parents, children, siblings and spouses of people with the disease.

Courtesy of the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure

Although Tigerlily does not provide counselors as part of their organization, Karmo stresses the importance of something else they do: peer-counseling.

“We pair the women up in groups so that they can talk to each other any time, whether it’s via Facebook, a text, a phone call or even a tweet,” Karmo says. “We help them create their own community that young women with busy schedules, many of whom may not have time for support groups, can still access [them].”

In Campbell’s situation, she says her diagnosis and treatment came at an extremely difficult time in her life because she had just given birth and had a 5-year-old at home. The programs, as well as the team-based efforts, of the Inova Institute helped her cope with the situation.

“It was a very overwhelming experience, where I was hearing a lot of information at once,” Campbell says. “But the Inova system was great; they gave me all my options and allowed me to decide what the best treatment plan was for myself.”

Campbell made the decision to have a full mastectomy, although it would have been an option for her to have a lumpectomy, a less invasive procedure that solely removes the cancer without removing the entire breast. However, because of her age and the fact that she has children, she chose to remove both her breasts to ensure the cancer would never come back.

She stresses the importance of knowing that this is an option for women and that it is possible to be completely cured.

Resources:

Cherry Blossom Breast Cancer Foundation 

www.cherryblossombreastcancerfoundation.org 

Tigerlily Foundation 

www.tigerlilyfoundation.org

Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure 

www.the3day.org

The Inova Breast Care Institute

www.inovabreastcare.org

Life With Cancer

www.lifewithcancer.org

National Breast Cancer Foundation

www.nationalbreastcancer.org

The National Cancer Institute

www.cancer.gov