Susan Niebur - Atrophysicist, Survivor, and Mom

Guest blog from Susan Niebur. Susan is a four time cancer survivor, astrophysicist, and mom of two happy little 4 and 6 year old boys. Susan is now fighting metastatic breast cancer in her spine, neck, ribs, and hips, with chemo and pain meds, still looking for that "new normal."

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I am alive today because of research funded by organizations like the American Cancer Society and the federal government.

I was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer in June 2007. I had a year of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, all developed by really smart researchers funded through the efforts of men and women like you. The treatments worked, and I have *lived* for 4.5 years while my babies grew up and went to school. I am grateful, so grateful, for that.

But the cancer came back. Now, like 150,000 other women and men in America, I am living with metastatic disease. Metastatic breast cancer, as some of you know all too well, is when the cancer moves away from the breast and recurs in the lungs, the liver, and other vital organs.

Now, I’m going to let you in on a dirty little secret: No one dies of breast cancer confined to their breast. Some of us die from treatment, but most of us die when the cancer has moved to our vital organs and shut them down. We die of metastatic disease. There are treatments we can try, but there is no cure.

When I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer this year, I was reassured that there were 20 chemotherapy drugs that we could try. We tried one. It worked, for a while. Then it stopped working. Three of the 20 drugs are in short supply right now, so I can’t have those. There are sixteen drugs left.

I will be on chemotherapy once a week, for the rest of my life. That is, until we’re out of drugs that work. That is why I believe we need more research. All of us with metastatic disease — and the 30% of women whose breast cancer will spread and become metastatic — will die without more research.

Oh, and — Research on metastatic disease is woefully underfunded, at just 3% of all breast cancer research.

Fight with me. As I fight for my life each day at radiation or each week at chemo, join me and the American Cancer Society as we fight for more birthdays.