Breast Fest is Over ... for Another Year

Breast Fest is over for another year! It was an outstanding weekend. A few highlights:

Packed opening night – incredible energy in the room, the films were truly inspiring. Rethink’s film debut About Her was absolutely embraced by the audience. All five of the beautiful women we featured in the doc were at Opening Night with friends and family. Sooooooo much love in the room!! Heart of the Sea….if you weren’t at Breast Fest, I highly, highly recommend you try to get your hands on a copy of this film so you too can be inspired by Rell Sunn. What a woman!!

Live Laugh Lunch – Our special luncheon for young women living with breast cancer in a word, “rocked”!! Mostly thanks to our guest performer Jonna Tomases. The room was literally roaring with laughter as she delivered her Girl Manifesto.

Stage IV and our panel on metastatic breast cancer – a really tough one but so appreciated by those that came out. Voices from the metastatic community need to be heard. We learned so much. Thanks to those that shared.

Closing night – this year’s Amazing Grace award went to a very creative and thought provoking film called Flat. We closed the night out with Jonna’s Body, Please Hold. It was so well received we are discussing special screenings of it in Vancouver and Calgary! Jonna Tomases is our new hero!

The rotunda outside our theatre – the conversations, hugs and speechless looks of appreciation from our guests as they debriefed outside the theatre will be long remembered.

We were touched by all the turnout and by the positive feedback. If you have a moment, check out Lisa Rendall’s reaction to Breast Fest on her blog by clicking here. Also, please read a great article from My Town Crier, featuring Karen Stowe’s personal story and her involvement with the documentary, About Her, by clicking here.

This week, we are riding the wave of positive energy that is following the festival. Please get in touch if you have ideas or want to get involved and help us grow it. We’d love your help!

Best, MJ

Photo by Sylvia Soo

Live! From Breast Fest!

A video blog from Breast Fest 2009 at the ROM in Toronto, Canada.

One Festival, Two Perspectives

Only one day left before Breastfest and the office is buzzing with activity. Our logistics schedule has been sent out by our great events team and we’re all excited for the next three days.

For myself as a Rethink employee and 4 year breast cancer survivor these events have such an impact on all levels. I love that my job gives me such a great opportunity to be involved in providing information and support to other women with breast cancer. But I am also nervous about how I’ll respond to some of the movies and panels. But I guess I’m not alone.

The movies this year are amazing, About Her features a friend and neighbor of mine and is a beautiful inspiring piece. My neighborhood, Bloor West Village has once again proven how supportive they are with over thirty tickets bought in the M6S postal code.

The panel I am personally most interested in is One Step At A Time:Facing Hereditary Breast Cancer on Sunday morning. As someone with the BRCA1 mutation with two children it’s always important for me to hear about risk reduction and have the opportunity to ask questions and hear others stories.

My wish for this festival, both as an employee and survivor is that women can connect with others. This is the one fact we hear time and time again, that connecting with other survivors is paramount. This is especially true for young women who may find themselves the youngest member by twenty some odd years in a traditional support group. I know I’m looking forward to reconnecting with the women from my Support Saturday group and connecting with others from all around the country.

Maura Young, Director, Finance and Administration at Rethink Breast Cancer

Mammogram News

A flurry of media requests yesterday as a result of the new guidelines around screening mammograms released Monday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. There were quite a few articles in today’s papers around this issue. Basically, the U.S. task force is recommending women receive mammograms every two years after age 50. This news comes out after at least a decade of the American Cancer Society (and I believe most breast cancer organizations in the US) recommending annual screenings beginning at 40. The government panel concluded the harms of early screening, including false positives and unneeded biopsies, outweighed the benefits. Instead, it recommended women under 50 consult with their doctors if they think they need a mammogram. This has been a controversial announcement in the United States. However, the changes that the U.S. task force is recommending are actually in keeping with what have been established guidelines in most of Canada. In Canada, most provinces start routine screening at age 50.

When we were first starting Rethink Breast Cancer in 2001, I found it very confusing that the screening age in the U.S. was 40 while in Canada it was 50. My emotional reaction at the time was that screening in Canada should be keeping up with the U.S. and that Rethink, an organization geared towards a young audience, should absolutely recommend screening at age 40 too. My own mom’s breast cancer was first detected by mammogram at age 48. After more research and dialogue with screening experts in Canada, we learned that traditional mammogram wasn’t very effective for young women because young women tend to have denser breast tissue than women over 50. At the moment, Rethink Breast Cancer’s guidelines recommend regular screening starting at age 50 but we encourage women in their 40s to talk to their doctors about their individual risk to determine whether they should start with a baseline mammogram and regular screening at an earlier age.

Right now, a politician in Ontario is trying to pass a Private Members Bill that would allow women age 40 and over access to the provincial screening program without a doctor’s referral. Again, my emotional instinct is always that this sounds like a good idea—if it saves even a few lives, that’s huge. I also happen to be without a GP at the moment and I’m sure many women out there are in the same situation. We also know there are GPs out there that are telling young women who have come to them with a breast problem that they are too young for breast cancer and that they should just keep an eye on things. A lot of the young breast cancer patients we meet took a long time to be diagnosed for this reason. Very scary. (Rethink is launching a new campaign in the new year to remind GPs that young women get breast cancer too.) But, while my heart wants to push for easier access to mammograms, I also remind myself that screening is complicated, especially in young women with dense breasts. An experienced, healthcare professional can help to determine a young woman’s individual screening needs as a mammogram may not actually be enough. Patients who have dense breasts are often recommended by radiologists to have additional imaging with either ultrasound or MRI. It is a case by case discussion depending on individual patient risk, age, degree of density, previous imaging etc. and it is hard to include all these factors in a guideline. Part of our work is to help empower young women to know how to talk to their GPs. If they want a referral to a breast specialist, they can get one. It’s the breast expert that will be able to determine next steps.

In any case, the media coverage around screening mammography will certainly get all breast cancer organizations, including Rethink Breast Cancer, revisiting their guidelines. It’s so important we check in on these issues and our guidelines on a regular basis. So much is changing in the cancer world. Rethink Breast Cancer continues to push for creative thinking around all issues relating to young women and breast cancer. It’s clear to me that we need a cost effect screening technique that works well on the dense breast tissue of younger women!

What do you think about this issue? Are you confused? Feeling OK that the U.S. screening advice is now in line with Canada? I’d love to hear from you.

Best,
MJ

MJ DeCoteau, Executive Director of Rethink Breast Cancer

Breast Fest: Travel Subsidy

Like everyone here [at Rethink Breast Cancer], I am excited to be in the throes of planning this year’s Breast Fest. One of my tasks is to book the travel for our Travel Subsidy recipients. For the first time this year, we wanted to reach out across the country and invite women living with breast cancer to share in the Breast Fest experience. The response was great and now I am busily booking flights and accommodation for eight women from all over Canada! I can’t wait to meet them all and welcome them to Toronto. While we have only corresponded by email, I already feel like I know these women. I know they are all excited to come and are grateful for the opportunity. We are grateful that they can be here and share their stories. For me, that’s the part about Breast Fest that resonates the most – hearing everyone’s stories. While the theme is common, each journey is unique. See you in Toronto ladies!

Tanya Baker, Office Manager and Donor Relations Coordinator at Rethink Breast Cancer

Gearing-Up For Breast Fest

The Toronto Live Laugh Learn kicked off on October 25th and for me it was such a special night. Twenty-three women showed up to the event hosted at the Yonge & Eglinton lululemon store. As a young woman just four months out of treatment it was truly amazing to connect with other women who have faced the same challenges and fears I have been experiencing. The group included newly diagnosed women and also those with treatment long behind them, and I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to meet so many inspiring women. I am really excited for the next Live. Laugh. Learn. on November 29/09, a session is themed around makeup and skin care!

I am also pumped for the Breast Fest Film Festival taking place at the ROM on November 20 – 22, 2009. A special lunch on Saturday November 21/09 at 11:30 AM has been organized for women who have experienced breast cancer. This lunch sounds like a great opportunity to mix and mingle with other survivors, and also features a performance by comedian and three-time cancer survivor Jonna Tamases. I had the opportunity to see her film Jonna’s Body, Please Hold a few months back. The film is a dark comedy that chronicles the war that goes on inside the body during cancer treatment. I found the film funny and thought provoking, a great reminder of the importance of laughter even in our darkest hours. It should be interesting to see what she has in store for the lunch! Space for is limited so please don’t forget to RSVP [purchase your tickets].Janelle Roberts, Breast Fest Advisory Committee and Live Laugh Learn Planning Committee Member

Tickets for Breast Fest are available by clicking here:
www.breastfestfilmfestival.com

Amazing Grace Award Winner: FLAT

"FLAT is an expression of something I have been thinking about from the time I got sick almost two years ago. So having the opportunity to show this film at the Breast Fest Film Festival means a lot to me. Its giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts and beliefs about this disease in an effort to open the dialogue about what we can do in our own lives to keep ourselves healthy. I am so excited that Rethink Breast Cancer came up with this platform for sharing ideas because I believe very much in the power of art and of film to transform. I hope that the Breast Fest will be the first stop for FLAT on a long road that will inspire many people around the world to take care of their bodies and to eradicate behaviors and elements that we know elevate the risk of breast cancer. We all deserve to live in a world that is cancer-free!"  FLAT Director, Nitsana Bellehsen

This year's winner of the Amazing Grace Award for Best Short Film, in honour of Grace Cianciotta, goes to FLAT. The director, Nitsana Bellehsen, will be flown to Toronto to present her film on the big "pink" screen at 8 PM on November 21, 2009 and presented with a $1500 cash prize

About the film …

The year is 2050. Some fathers bring their sons to a museum to see the way women used to look... What happened to make them change? And why did it happen? 

You can watch FLAT by clicking here.

Breast Fest: About Her

"I had no idea this project would move and inspire me the way it did. The women I met were so open and forthcoming. They are all younger than I am. They all have remarkable spirits. But most of all they reminded me the importance of love. And I am grateful to have worked on this film." Phyllis Ellis, Director of About Her

Every person will go through challenges in their lives. No one expects breast cancer to be one of them. About Her tells the powerful story of five young women from across Canada who have each been diagnosed with HER2+ breast cancer. They were traveling, building their careers, and starting families. They were each on top of the world and then everything changed. Canadian director, Phyllis Ellis, captures candid moments with each woman as she relates her experience of this aggressive form of the disease: the shock of diagnosis, finding the strength to confront mortality head-on and discovering new hope for the future.

Click here to view the Breast Fest schedule and to purchase tickets.