In The Cancer Trenches

Rebecca Lipkin has lived in the trenches before. As an accomplished television news producer, she's covered her share of conflicts around the world. She's back in the trenches now, this time fighting for her life.

This past June, she had a recurrence of Inflammatory Breast Cancer. She'd already had surgery and radiation, so it was back into the chemo room for more treatment. She's just completed her thirteenth round of chemo.

Her cancer experience is a little different. She's waging her battle across the Atlantic, in London.

We'll hear from Rebecca today and tomorrow.

-- Laurie

I often return to a scene from my recent past. A large room in a large hospital ward in London. Ten armchairs organized in a circular pattern.

In one of the seats, a middle aged woman, her head fully covered in a hijab, receiving her chemotherapy treatment. Her two daughters are at the ready, comforting her, looking into her eyes, looking at each other.

Across from her, a man, sitting, reading, wearing a Jewish skullcap, the yarmulka.

In other circumstances, these two people might barely meet, let alone look at each other.

But on this day, there are sympathetic glances. Because they are involved in the same battle -- to rid the cancer within them. And it is a battle that, reluctantly, I am facing, too.

My first personal introduction to Cancer World was back in June, 2007. I noticed what to many of my friends was unnoticeable -- a small, bug-bite mark on my left breast. Really, it was barely enough to worry about, except being labeled a hypochondriac.

But for some reason, I decided to check it out. My insurance had changed, so I thought I might as well see how the British system of referrals works.

My general practitioner looked at the mark, was not worried, but decided to refer me to another doctor that same day. I had a mammogram and an ultrasound. That very night, a breast specialist told me the news.

This was not a diagnosis but a hunch, she said, with 99 percent certainty -- I had breast cancer. Not just breast cancer, but a particularly deadly form of the disease called inflammatory breast cancer, or IBC.

I had never heard of the disease. In fact, most doctors have not. In the States, it accounts for less than 5 percent of breast cancer cases. Inflammatory breast cancer crops up more in North Africa than in Europe and America. It affects more people of color than white Europeans. It affects very few people, period.

It is a rare breast cancer that eludes mammograms. It grows in sheets, not lumps, so all those tools we are told about -- feeling for a lump in the breast -- are useless. IBC's symptoms are often thought to be something else. Many doctors think it is a breast infection, or mastitis, which often affects nursing mothers.

In my case, I had the right doctor, and the right diagnosis.

I am the same person I was on the day of that diagnosis -- an energetic, social, hard-working person. I'm the same person, only with a form of cancer that has a pretty awful prognosis.

I try not to google IBC anymore. It just gets me scared. One day I accidentally came across the memorial page -- and it almost ruined me.

I went to New York to get a second opinion, and it was essentially the same. The protocol was the same. But in the U.S. I faced a distinctly American nightmare that few Europeans understand. In Great Britain, I have private health insurance. Even if I didn't, I would have National Health Insurance, which would fast-track my treatment for breast cancer. If I were to return to America without a job, I would have a pre-existing condition and would probably be uninsurable. And the bills -- thousands out-of-pocket for that second opinion -- would increase exponentially.

That sealed the decision.

I decided to go back to where my support system is right now -- London.

-- Rebecca Lipkin

7:00 AM ET | 10-22-2008 | permalink

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