Taking Charge of Breast Cancer

Notes

Notes I n t r o d u c t i o n 1. In a series of interviews with nine breast cancer patients, Jennifer R. Fosket makes the point that women may come to rely on biomedicine as the best hope for a cure, while simultaneously recognizing that this knowledge is unstable and up for debate. See “Problematizing Biomedicine: Women’s Constructions of Breast Cancer Knowledge,” in Ideologies of Breast Cancer: Feminist Perspectives, ed. Laura K. Potts (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 15–36. 2. This theory received support with the finding that since many women abandoned such treatment after a national study concluded it slightly increased breast cancer risk, rates for estrogen-receptor-positive cancer dropped by 15 percent . Gina Kolata, “Reversing Trend, Big Drop Is Seen in Breast Cancer,” New York Times, December 15, 2006. 3. In order to interview survivors in leadership positions in breast cancer organizations, I interviewed some women diagnosed earlier than 1994. In a few special cases, for example women who had had a reoccurrence or who experienced ongoing problems with breast reconstruction, these also had been diagnosed before 1994. 259 4. M. Lethbridge-Cejku and J. Vickerie, “Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Adults: National Health Interview Survey, 2003,” Vital and Health Statistics 10 (10 January 2006): table 5; www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_10/sr10_225.pdf (last accessed 6/28/07). 5. Anne S. Kasper, “Burdens and Barriers: Poor Women Face Cancer,” in Breast Cancer: Society Shapes an Epidemic, ed. Anne S. Kasper and Susan J. Ferguson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 184–212; Michael S. Simon and Richard K. Severson, “Racial Differences in Survival of Female Breast Cancer in the Detroit Metropolitan Area,” Cancer 72 (1996): 208–314. 6. Mary K. Anglin, “Working from the Inside Out: Implications of Breast Cancer Activism for Biomedical Policies and Practices,” Social Science and Medicine 44 (1997): 1403–15; Maureen Hogan Casamayou, The Politics of Breast Cancer (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001); Patricia A. Kaufert, “Women, Resistance, and the Breast Cancer Movement,” in Pragmatic Women and Body Politics, ed. Margaret Lock and Patricia A. Kaufert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 287–309; Verta Taylor and Marieke Van Willigen, “Women’s Self-Help and the Reconstruction of Gender: The Postpartum Support and Breast Cancer Movements,” Mobilization: An International Journal 1 (1996): 123–42. 7. Laura K. Potts, “Publishing the Personal: Autobiographical Narratives of Breast Cancer and Self,” in Ideologies of Breast Cancer: Feminist Perspectives, ed. Laura K. Potts (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 98–127. 8. Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1980), 16. C h a p t e r 1 . T e l l i n g S t o r i e s 1. The term “survivor” to describe a woman still living is not strictly accurate, as many breast cancer activists note. It is not possible to know that someone has survived breast cancer until they die of something else. Arthur W. Frank, in The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 8, uses the term “remission society” to describe people who are well but cannot be considered cured, and he includes in this group everyone who has had cancer. From time to time, I will use the term “survivor” as a useful shorthand to describe women who no longer had active cancers. 2. Tamoxifen is a medication in pill form that interferes with the activity of estrogen. Estrogen promotes the growth of breast cancer cells. Tamoxifen works against the effects of estrogen on these cells. It is used as adjuvant, or additional, therapy following primary treatment for early-stage breast cancer. In women at high risk of developing breast cancer, tamoxifen reduces the chance of developing the disease. 260 N o t e s t o P a g e s 8 – 1 3 N o t e s t o P a g e s 1 4 – 1 6 261 3. Ellen Leopold, A Darker Ribbon: Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999). 4. American Cancer Society, Breast Cancer Facts and Figures 2005–2006 (Atlanta: American Cancer Society, Inc.); www.cancer.org/downloads/STT/ CAFF2005BrF.pdf (last accessed 6/28/07). 5. Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977). 6. Steven Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and...