Now the fast, funny and for real book on how to deal with a breast cancer diagnosis–or any big trauma in life–is available for download on everybody’s favorite cyber-library, the Kindle. To download ‘pink tips’ now, click HERE.

Happy reading–and recovering–from whatever life’s thrown at you. YOU CAN DO IT.

I’ve been on the drug Zometa for almost this whole year and though I’ve suffered a little set back I know Zometa has been helping me beat off the cancer beast. Now a new study “proves” I’m right–Breast Cancer Survival Boosted By Bone Drug.

I go for my infusion (drip) of the Z–as I call it–tomorrow–and I’ll be skipping in like a girl on the playground as I do. Bring it on, baby.

I will also get a new tumor marker reading this week–and I’m praying those rising numbers have at least plateau-ed–I will definitely let you know–

hoping once again to give you good news– and prove that old saying false– for a second time this week.

Like the rest of you I read this information with a hopeful heart and in my case, a spinning head–as in what are they saying? Sometimes I feel like I’m back in that Biology class I passed by the skin of my teeth at Boston College freshman year–”724 women, whose cancer had become resistant to aromatase inhibitors Femara and Arimidex, were given the aromatase inhibitor Aromasin plus placebo or Aromasin plus Afinitor, an approved kidney cancer drug that blocks the mTOR protein.” I am so lame I already am confused and this isn’t even difficult to understand.

But after reading the article three times–yes, three times–I think I get it, kind of.  There were a few studies, and in one, a kidney cancer drug in combination with a breast cancer drug showed promise in staving off the progression or growth of cancer cells.  That’s fantastic–I am so glad–of course it would be best if the drug kept cancer away indefinitely and not just the 6 or so months the study says it does. That means someone dying of breast cancer might see another Christmas–but not make it to Mother’s Day.

Still, am I looking a gift horse in the mouth?  Not on your life.  Go, Science, go.  Keep trying, keep up the trials, sign me up if I can help–after all, many of these studies are on post-menopausal women, which means they don’t necessarily work on me.  But hey–like I said, I’m not complaining.  Bring them on anyway–

Because this woman wants to see not just another Christmas and Mother’s Day, but her wedding anniversary, July 4th, Halloween, Arbor Day, and any and all of the holidays–obvious or obscure– on the calendar–

for many many MANY years to come.

This drug has saved lives. Maybe not yours, but what if it had? What if you were one of the people who know this drug has kept you alive?

All I can hope is that some day the almighty dollar mixed with educated guessing does not determine who lives…

and who dies.

Whether or not you worry about all the preservatives in cosmetics and how they may or may not affect a woman’s chemistry toward cancer–as I do– saying good-bye to such a leader in the fight to bring awareness and an eventual end to breast cancer is a tragedy.

Thank you so much for your tireless effort and work, Evelyn Lauder. May you rest in peace.

It’s the first airing in Asia since the film was made in 2005 and I am thrilled and honored that Taiwan is joining other countries like Sweden, Israel, Canada, the United States and all of Latin America in bringing this story of help and hope to its country.

I feel like maybe with all these countries getting on board and showing my film, getting the message out, affecting lives, sharing our strength, that maybe together we can really do something about this stupid disease.

I know we hear this all the time–in advertisements from sneakers to cereals– that we can ‘make a difference’: but maybe it’s not as trite as it sounds? Maybe ‘we’ can do something to change the statistics, to take back the losses and lower the number of the all-too-many lives changed forever because of breast cancer? I mean, according to the American Association for Cancer Research, in Taiwan, breast cancer has become the leading cancer in females, with age-adjusted incidence increasing from 11.72 per 100,000 women in 1980 to 45.89 per 100,000 in 2003.

Let me state the obvious: this has to stop.

Not that an airing of The Breast Cancer Diaries can do that–don’t I wish it could. But my film should be able to enhance and highlight conversations and connections between those people encased in their own breast cancer battle in cities I’ve never visited, in a language I can’t speak, but whose turmoil and fear I can describe as well as if I were in Taipei holding the hand of a woman sitting in the oncology waiting room. At the very least The Breast Cancer Diaries shows people living five thousand miles from me that I am exactly like them in one very awful way–and somehow, that bonds us in a way that no foreign exchange program ever could.

To me, that’s worth everything.

And I’ll dare to dream that our television debut in Taiwan, located off the southeasten coast of mainland China, is just the beginning of more showings of the film across Asia in the years to come. That’s what sadly special about my film: it never gets old and it knows no geographic boundaries. New cases of breast cancer, and all the Hell that goes with them, happen every single day, all over the world.

So I thank you, Taiwan, for choosing to bring The Breast Cancer Diaries into the homes of the estimated 23.2 million people living in your country…

together, maybe we can really make a difference.

Ann’s books ‘pink tips’ and ‘Words To Live By’ now available in the SHOP section of this website.

Two opportunities to see the documentary and join us afterward for a filmmaker Q&A featuring Co-producer and film subject, Ann Murray Paige, and Director Linda Pattillo.

Tuesday April 12th at Sacramento State
7:30
Alpine Hall 235
Part of the Festival of the Arts

Wednesday April 13th at UC Davis
7 p.m.
Wellman 2

Read the Raves and Reviews for “The Breast Cancer Diaries” below.

Please do two (well, actually three) things today:

1) Leave a “Positive Vibe” message in the comments below for Ann Murray Paige so that the positive vibes just wash over her in the hospital today. If you read Ann’s blog post below she is in for surgery related to the reoccurrence of her breast cancer and we are reaching out to all to send loving vibes her way.

2) Click the link above and join the Project Pink Cause on Facebook! Then invite all your friends on FB to join too. Let’s send Ann one huge healing message by joining the cause today.

and

3) Please pass along to friends the link to this Project Pink Diary so they too can leave a message below for Ann and also join the cause.