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According to Leslie Brunetta, she now has much more hair than she had last July. |
We became aware of Leslie Brunetta because of her book, Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating, co-authored with Catherine L. Craig. Thanks to a piece Leslie wrote for the Concord Monitor (and excerpted here), we also learned that she is a breast cancer survivor. Leslie agreed to an interview about her experience, and in her emailed responses, she candidly talks about her diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up for her cancers, plural: She was diagnosed simultaneously with two types of breast cancer.
DXS: In your
Concord Monitor piece, you describe the link between an understanding of the
way evolution happens and some of the advances in modern medicine. What led you
to grasp the link between the two?
LB: I think, because I’m not a scientist (I’m an English
major), a lot of things that scientists think are obvious strike me as
revelations. I somehow had never realized that the search for what would turn
out to be DNA began with trying to explain how, in line with the theory of
evolution by natural selection, variation arises and traits are passed from
generation to generation. As I was figuring out what each chapter in Spider Silk would be about, I tried to
think about the questions non-biologists like me would still have about
evolution when they got to that point in the book. By the time we got past
dragline silk, I realized that we had so far fleshed out the ways that silk
proteins could and have evolved at the genetic level. But that explanation
probably wouldn’t answer readers’ questions about how, for example, abdominal
spinnerets—which are unique to spiders—might have evolved: the evolution of
silk is easier to untangle than the evolution of body parts, which is why we
focused on it in the first place.
I decided I wanted to write a chapter on “evo-devo,”
evolutionary developmental biology, partly because there was a cool genetic
study on the development of spinnerets that showed they’ve evolved from limbs.
Fortunately, my co-author, Cay Craig, and editor at Yale, Jean Thomson Black,
okayed the idea, because that chapter wasn’t in the original proposal. Writing
that chapter, I learned why it took so long—nearly a century—to get from Darwin
and Mendel to Watson and Crick and then so long again to get to where we are
today. If we non-scientists understand something scientific, it’s often how it
works, not how a whole string of people over the course of decades building on
each other’s work discovered how it works. I knew evolution was the
accumulation of gene changes, but, until I wrote that chapter, it hadn’t
occurred to me that people began to look for genes because they wanted to
understand evolution.
So that was all in the spider part of my life. Then, a
few months into the cancer part of my life, I was offered a test called
Oncotype DX, which would look at genetic markers in my tumor cells to develop a
risk profile that could help me decide whether I should have chemotherapy plus
tamoxifen or just tamoxifen. The results turned out to be moot in my case
because I had a number of positive lymph nodes, although it was reassuring to
find out that the cancer was considered low risk for recurrence. But still—the
idea that a genetic test could let some women avoid chemo without taking on
extra risk, that’s huge. No one would want to go through chemo if it wasn’t
necessary. So by then I was thinking, “Thank you, Darwin!”
And then, coincidentally, the presidential primary
season was heating up, and there were a number of serious candidates (well,
serious in the sense that they had enough backing to get into the debates) who
proudly declared that they had no time for the theory of evolution. And year
after year these stupid anti-evolution bills are introduced in various state
legislatures. While I was lying on the couch hanging out in the days after
chemo sessions, I started thinking, “So, given that you don’t give any credence
to Darwin and his ideas, would you refuse on principle to take the Oncotype
test or gene-based therapies like Gleevec or Herceptin if you had cancer or if
someone in your family had cancer? Somehow I don’t think so.” That argument is
not going to convince hard-core denialists (nothing will), but maybe the
cognitive dissonance in connection with something as concrete as cancer will
make some people who waver want to find out more.
DXS: You
mention having been diagnosed with two different forms of cancer, one in each
breast. Can you say what each kind was and, if possible, how they differed?
LB: Yes, I unfortunately turned out to be an “interesting”
case. This is one arena where, if you possibly can, you want to avoid being
interesting. At first it seemed that I had a tiny lesion that was an invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) and that I would “just” need a lumpectomy and radiation.
Luckily for me, the doctor reading my mammogram is known as an eagle eye, and
she saw a few things that—given the positive finding from the biopsy—concerned
her. She recommended an MRI. In fact, even though I switched to another
hospital for my surgery, she sent emails there saying I should have an MRI. That
turned up “concerning” spots in both breasts, which led to more biopsies, which
revealed multiple tiny cancerous lesions. The only reasonable option was then a
double mastectomy.
The lesions in the right breast were IDCs. About 70%
of breast cancers are diagnosed as IDCs. Those cancers start with the cells
lining the milk ducts. The ones in the left breast were invasive lobular carcinomas (ILCs), which start in the lobules at the end of the milk ducts. Only
about 10% of breast cancers are ILCs.
Oncologists hate lobular cancer. Unlike ductal
cancers, which form as clumps of cells, lobular cancers form as single-file ribbons
of cells. The tissue around ductal cancer cells reacts to those cells, which is
why someone may feel a lump—she’s (or he’s) not feeling the cancer itself but
the inflammation of the tissue around it. And because the cells clump, they
show up more readily on mammograms. Not so lobular cancers. They mostly don’t
give rise to lumps and they’re hard to spot on mammograms. They snake their way
through tissue for quite a while without bothering anything.
In my case, this explains why last spring felt like an
unremitting downhill slide. Every time someone looked deeper, they found
something worse. It turned out that on my left side, the lobular side, I had
multiple positive lymph nodes, which was why I needed not just chemo but also
radiation (which usually isn’t given after a mastectomy). That was the side
that didn’t even show up much on the mammogram. On the right side, the ductal
side, which provoked the initial suspicions, my nodes were clear. I want to
write about this soon, because I want to find out more about it. I’ve only
recently gotten to the place emotionally where I think I can deal with reading
the research papers as opposed to more general information. By the way, the
resource that most helped us better understand what my doctors were talking
about was Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book. It was invaluable as we made our way through
this process, although it turned out that I had very few decisions to make
because there was usually only one good option.
DXS: As part of
your treatment, you had a double mastectomy. One of our goals with this
interview is to tell women what some of these experiences with treatment are
like. If you’re comfortable doing so, could you tell us a little bit about what
a double mastectomy entails and what you do after one in practical terms?
LB: A mastectomy is a strange operation. In a way, it’s
more of an emotional and psychological experience than a physical experience.
My surgeon, who was fantastic, is a man, and when we discussed the need for the
mastectomies he said that I would be surprised at how little pain would be
involved and how quick the healing would be. Even though I trusted him a lot by
then, my reaction was pretty much, “Like you would know, right?” But he did
know. When you think about it, it’s fairly non-invasive surgery. Unless the
cancer has spread to the surrounding area, which doesn’t happen very often now
due to early detection, no muscle or bone is removed. (Until relatively
recently, surgeons removed the major muscle in the chest wall, and sometimes
even bone, because they believed it would cut the risk of recurrence. That
meant that many women lost function in their arm and also experienced back
problems.) None of your organs are touched. They don’t go into your abdominal
cavity. Also, until recently, they removed a whole clump of underarm lymph
nodes when they did lumpectomies or mastectomies. Now they usually remove just
a “sentinel node,” because they know that it will give them a fairly reliable
indicator of whether the cancer has spread to the other nodes. That also makes
the surgery less traumatic than it used to be.
I opted not to have reconstruction. Reconstruction is
a good choice for many women, but I didn’t see many benefits for me and I
didn’t like the idea of a more complicated surgery. My surgery was only about
two hours. I don’t remember any pain at all afterwards, and my husband says I
never complained of any. I was in the hospital for just one night. By the next
day, I was on ibuprofen only. The bandages came off two days after the surgery.
That’s shocking, to see your breasts gone and replaced
by thin red lines, no matter how well you’ve prepared yourself. It made the
cancer seem much more real in some way than it had seemed before. In
comparison, the physical recovery from the surgery was fairly minor because I
had no infections or complications. There were drains in place for about 10
days to collect serum, which would otherwise collect under the skin, and my
husband dealt with emptying them twice a day and measuring the amount. I had to
sleep on my back, propped up, because of where the drains were placed, high up
on my sides, and I never really got used to that. It was a real relief to have
the drains removed.
My surgeon told me to start doing stretching exercises
with my arms right away, and that’s really important. I got my full range of
motion back within a couple of months. But even though I had my surgery last
March, I’ve noticed lately that if I don’t stretch fully, like in yoga, things
tighten up. That may be because of the radiation, though, because it’s only on
my left side. Things are never quite the same as they were before the surgery,
though. Because I did have to have the axillary nodes out on my left side, my
lymph system is disrupted. I haven’t had any real problems with lymphedema yet,
and I may never, but in the early months I noticed that my hands would swell if
I’d been walking around a lot, and I’d have to elevate them to get them to
drain back. That rarely happens now. But I’ve been told I need to wear a
compression sleeve if I fly because the change in air pressure can cause lymph
to collect. Also, I’m supposed to protect my hands and arms from cuts as much
as possible. It seems to me that small nicks on my fingers take longer to heal
than they used to. So even though most of the time it seems like it’s all over,
I guess in those purely mechanical ways it’s never over. It’s not just that you
no longer have breasts, it’s also that nerves and lymph channels and bits of
tissue are also missing or moved around.
The bigger question is how one deals with now lacking
breasts. I’ve decided not to wear prostheses. I can get away with it because I
was small breasted, I dress in relatively loose clothes anyway, and I’ve gained
confidence over time that no one notices or cares and I care less now if they
do notice. But getting that self-confidence took quite a while. Obviously, it
has an effect on my sex life, but we have a strong bond and it’s just become a
piece of that bond. The biggest thing is that it’s always a bit of a shock when
I catch sight of myself naked in a mirror because it’s a reminder that I’ve had
cancer and there’s no getting around the fact that that sucks.
DXS: My mother-in-law completed radiation and chemo for breast cancer last year,
and if I remember correctly, she had to go frequently for a period of weeks for
radiation. Was that you experience? Can you describe for our readers what the
time investment was like and what the process was like?
LB: I went for radiation 5 days a week for about 7 weeks. Three
days a week, I’d usually be in and out of the hospital within 45 minutes. One
day a week, I met with the radiology oncologist and a nurse to debrief, which
was also a form of emotional therapy for me. And one day a week, they laid on a
chair massage, and the nurse/massage therapist who gave the massage was great
to talk to, so that was more therapy. Radiation was easy compared to chemo.
Some people experience skin burning and fatigue, but I was lucky that I didn’t
experience either. Because I’m a freelancer, the time investment wasn’t a
burden for me. I’m also lucky living where I live, because I could walk to the
hospital. It was a pleasant 3-mile round-trip walk, and I think the walking
helped me a lot physically and mentally.
DXS: And now to
the chemo. My interest in interviewing you about your experience began with a
reference you made on Twitter to “chemo brain,” and of course, after reading
your evolution-medical advances piece. Can you tell us a little about what the
process of receiving chemotherapy is like? How long does it take? How
frequently (I know this varies, but your experience)?
LB: Because of my age (I was considered young, which was
always nice to hear) and state of general good health, my oncologist put me on
a dose-dense AC-T schedule. This meant going for treatment every two weeks over
the course of 16 weeks—8 treatment sessions. At the first 4 sessions, I was
given Adriamycin and Cytoxan (AC), and the last 4 sessions I was given Taxol (T). The idea behind giving multiple drugs and giving them frequently is that
they all attack cancer cells in different ways and—it goes back to evolution—by
attacking them frequently and hard on different fronts, you’re trying to avoid
selecting for a population that’s resistant to one or more of the drugs. They
can give the drugs every two weeks to a lot of patients now because they’ve got
drugs to boost the production of white blood cells, which the cancer drugs
suppress. After most chemo sessions, I went back the next day for a shot of one
of these drugs, Neulasta.
The chemo clinic was, bizarrely, a very relaxing
place. The nurses who work there were fantastic, and the nurse assigned to me,
Kathy, was always interesting to talk with. She had a great sense of humor, and
she was also interested in the science behind everything we were doing, so if I
ever had questions she didn’t have ready answers for, she’d find out for me. A
lot of patients were there at the same time, but we each had a private space.
You’d sit in a big reclining chair. They had TVs and DVDs, but I usually used
it as an opportunity to read. My husband sat through the first session with me,
and a close friend who had chemo for breast cancer 15 years ago sat through a
few other sessions, but once I got used to it, I was comfortable being there
alone. Because of the nurses, it never felt lonely.
I’d arrive and settle in. Kathy would take blood for
testing red and white blood counts and, I think, liver function and some other
things, and she’d insert a needle and start a saline drip while we waited for
the results. I’ve always had large veins, so I opted to have the drugs administered
through my arm rather than having a port implanted in my chest. Over the course
of three to four hours, she’d change the IV bags. Some of the bags were drugs
to protect against nausea, so I’d start to feel kind of fuzzy—I don’t think I
retained a whole lot of what I read there! The Adriamycin was bright orange;
they call it the Red Devil, because it can chew up your veins—sometimes it felt
like it was burning but Kathy could stop that by slowing the drip. Otherwise,
it was fairly uneventful. I’d have snacks and usually ate lunch while still
hooked up.
I was lucky I never had any reactions to any of the
drugs, so actually getting the chemo was a surprisingly pleasant experience
just because of the atmosphere. On the one hand, you’re aware of all these
people around you struggling with cancer and you know things aren’t going well
for some of them, so it’s heartbreaking, and also makes you consider, sometimes
fearfully, your own future no matter how well you’re trying to brace yourself
up. But at the same time, the people working there are so positive, but not in
a Pollyannaish-false way, that they helped me as I tried to stay positive. The
social worker stopped in with each patient every session, and she was
fantastic—I could talk out any problems or fears I had with her, and that
helped a huge amount.
DXS: Would you
be able to run us through a timeline of the physical effects of chemotherapy
after an infusion? How long does it take before it hits hardest? My
mother-in-law told me that her biggest craving, when she could eat, was for
carb-heavy foods like mashed potatoes and for soups, like vegetable soup. What
was your experience with that?
LB: My biggest fear when I first learned I would need
chemo was nausea. My oncologist told us that they had nausea so well controlled
that over the past few years, she had only had one or two patients who had
experienced it. As with the surgeon’s prediction about mastectomy pain, this
turned out to be true: I never had even a single moment of nausea.
But there were all sorts of other effects. For the
first few days after a session, the most salient effects were actually from the
mix of drugs I took to stave off nausea. I generally felt pretty fuzzy, but not
necessarily sleepy—part of the mix was steroids, so you’re a little hyped.
There’s no way I’d feel safe driving on those days, for example. I’d sleep well
the first three nights because I took Ativan, which has an anti-nausea effect.
But except for those days, my sleep was really disrupted. Partly that’s because,
I’m guessing, the chemo hits certain cells in your brain and partly it’s
because you get thrown into chemical menopause, so there were a lot of night
hot flashes. Even though I’d already started into menopause, this chemo
menopause was a lot more intense and included all the symptoms regularly
associated with menopause.
By the end of the first session, I was feeling pretty
joyful because it was much less bad than I had thought it would be. By the
second week in the two-week cycle, I felt relatively normal. But even though it
never got awful, the effects started to accumulate. My hair started to fall out
the morning I was going to an award ceremony for Spider Silk. It was ok at the ceremony, but we shaved it off that
night. I decided not to wear a wig. First, it was the summer, and it would have
been hot. Second, I usually have close to a buzz cut, and I can’t imagine
anyone would make a wig that would look anything like my hair. My kids’
attitude was that everyone would know something was wrong anyway, so I should
just be bald, and that helped a lot. But it’s hard to see in people’s eyes
multiple times a day their realization that you’re in a pretty bad place. Also,
it’s not just your head hair that goes. So do your eyebrows, your eyelashes,
your pubic hair, and most of the tiny hairs all over your skin. And as your
skin cells are affected by the chemo (the chemo hits all fast-reproducing
cells), your skin itself gets more sensitive and then is not protected by those
tiny hairs. I remember a lot of itching. And strange things like my head
sticking to my yoga mat and my reading glasses sticking to the side of my head
instead of sliding over my ears.
I never lost my appetite, but I did have food cravings
during the AC cycles. I wanted sushi and seaweed salad, of all things. And
steak. My sense of taste went dull, so I also wanted things that tasted strong
and had crunch. I stopped drinking coffee and alcohol, partly because of the
sleep issues but partly because it didn’t taste very good anyway. I drank loads
of water on the advice of the oncologist, the nurses, and my acupuncturist, and
I think that helped a lot.
During the second cycle, I developed a fever. That was
scary. I was warned that if I ever developed a fever, I should call the
oncologist immediately, no matter the time of day or day of week. The problem
is that your immune response is knocked down by the chemo, so what would
normally be a small bacterial infection has the potential to rage out of
control. I was lucky. We figured out that the source of infection was a
hemorrhoid—the Adriamycin was beginning to chew into my digestive tract, a
well-known side effect. (Having to pay constant attention to yet another
usually private part of the body just seemed totally unfair by this point.)
Oral antibiotics took care of it, which was great because I avoided having to
go into the hospital and all the risks entailed with getting heavy-duty IV
antibiotic treatment. And we were also able to keep on schedule with the chemo
regimen, which is what you hope for.
After that, I became even more careful about avoiding
infection, so I avoided public places even more than I had been. I’m very close
to a couple of toddlers, and I couldn’t see them for weeks because they were in
one of those toddler constant-viral stages, and I really missed them.
The Taxol seems to be much less harsh than the AC
regimen, so a lot of these side effects started to ease off a bit by the second
8 weeks, which was certainly a relief.
I was lucky that I didn’t really have mouth sores or
some of the other side effects. Some of this is, I think, just because besides
the cancer I don’t have any other health issues. Some of it is because my
husband took over everything and I don’t have a regular job, so I had the
luxury of concentrating on doing what my body needed. I tried to walk every
day, and I slept when I needed to, ate when and what I needed to, and went to
yoga class when my immune system was ok. I also went to acupuncture every week.
I know the science is iffy on that, but I think it helped me with the side
effects, even if it was the placebo effect at work (I’m a big fan of the
placebo effect). We also both had extraordinary emotional support from many
friends and knew we could call lots of people if we needed anything. That’s
huge when you’re in this kind of situation.
Currently, I’m still dealing with some minor joint
pains, mostly in my wrists and feet. I wasn’t expecting this problem, but my
oncologist says it’s not uncommon: they think it’s because your immune system
has to re-find its proper level of function, and it can go into overdrive and
set up inflammation in the joints. That’s gradually easing off, though.
Most people don’t have it as easy as I did in terms of
the medical, financial, and emotional resources I had to draw on. I’m very
mindful of that and very grateful.
DXS: You say
that you had “few terrible side effects” and a “very cushy home situation.” I’m
sure any woman would like to at least be able to experience the latter while
dealing with a full-body chemical attack. What were some factors that made it
“cushy” that women might be able to talk to their families or caregivers about
replicating for them?
LB: As I’ve said, some of it is just circumstance. For
example, my kids were old enough to be pretty self-sufficient and old enough to
understand what was going on, which meant both that they needed very little
from me in terms of care and also that they were less scared than they might
have been if they were younger. My husband happens to be both very competent
(more competent than I am) around the house and very giving. I live in
Cambridge, MA, where I could actually make choices about where I wanted to be
treated at each phase and know I’d get excellent, humane care and where none of
the facilities I went to was more than about 20 minutes away.
Some things that women might have some control over
and that their families might help nudge them toward:
- Find doctors you trust. Ask a lot of questions and make sure you understand the answers. But don’t get hung up on survival or recurrence statistics. There’s no way to know for sure what your individual outcome will be. Go for the treatment that you and your doctors believe will give you the best chance, and then assume as much as possible that your outcome will be good.
- Make sure you talk regularly with a social worker or other therapist who specializes in dealing with breast cancer patients. If you have fears or worries that you don’t want to talk to your partner or family about, here’s where you’ll get lots of help.
- Find compatible friends who have also had cancer to talk to. I had friends who showed me their mastectomy scars, who showed me their reconstructions, who told me about their experiences with chemo and radiation, who told me about what life after treatment was like (is still like decades later…). And none of them told me, “You should…” They all just told me what was hard for them and what worked for them and let me figure out what worked for me. Brilliant.
- Try to get some exercise even if you don’t feel like it. It was often when I felt least like moving around that a short walk made me feel remarkably better. But I would forget that, so my husband would remind me. Ask someone to walk with you if you’re feeling weak. Getting your circulation going seems to help the body process the chemo drugs and the waste products they create. For the same reason, drink lots of water.
- Watch funny movies together. Laughter makes a huge difference.
- Pamper yourself as much as possible. Let people take care of you and help as much as they’re willing. But don’t be afraid to say no to anything that you don’t want or that’s too much.
Family members and caregivers should also take care of
themselves by making some time for themselves and talking to social workers or
therapists if they feel the need. It’s a big, awful string of events for
everyone involved, not just the patient.
DXS: In the
midst of all of this, you seem to have written a fascinating book about spiders
and their webs. Were you able to work while undergoing your treatments? Were
there times that were better than others for attending to work? Could work be a
sort of occupational therapy, when it was possible for you to do it, to keep
you engaged?
LB: The book had been published about 6 months before my
diagnosis. The whole cancer thing really interfered not with the writing, but
with my efforts to publicize it. I had started to build toward a series of
readings and had to abandon that effort. I had also started a proposal for a
new book and had to put that aside. I had one radio interview in the middle of
chemo, which was kind of daunting but I knew I couldn’t pass up the
opportunity, and when I listen to it now, I can hear my voice sounds kind of
shaky. It went well, but I was exhausted afterwards. Also invigorated,
though—it made me feel like I hadn’t disappeared into the cancer. I had two
streams of writing going on, both of which were therapeutic. I sent email
updates about the cancer treatment to a group of friends—that was definitely
psychological therapy. I also tried to keep the Spider Silk blog up to date by summarizing related research papers
and other spider silk news—that was intellectual therapy. I just worked on them
when I felt I wanted to. The second week of every cycle my head was usually
reasonably clear.
I don’t really know whether I have chemo brain. I
notice a lot of names-and-other-proper-nouns drop. But whether that’s from the
chemo per se, or from the hormone changes associated with the chemically
induced menopause, or just from emotional overload and intellectual
distraction, I don’t know. I find that I’m thinking more clearly week by week.
DXS: What is
the plan for your continued follow-up? How long will it last, what is the
frequency of visits, sorts of tests, etc.?
LB: I’m on tamoxifen and I’ll be on that for probably two
years and then either stay on that or go onto an aromatase inhibitor [Ed. note:
these drugs block production of estrogen and are used for estrogen-sensitive
cancers.] for another three years. I’ll see one of the cancer doctors every
three months for at least a year, I think. They’ll ask me questions and do a
physical exam and take blood samples to test for tumor markers. At some point
the visits go to every six months.
For self-care, I’m exercising more, trying to lose
some weight, and eating even better than I was before.
DXS: Last…if
you’re comfortable detailing it…what led to your diagnosis in the first place?
LB: My breast cancer was uncovered by my annual mammogram.
I’ve worried about cancer, as I suppose most people do. But I never really worried
about breast cancer. My mother has 10 sisters and neither she nor any of them
ever had breast cancer. I have about 20 older female cousins—I was 50 when I
was diagnosed last year--and as far as I know none of them have had breast
cancer. I took birth control pills for less than a year decades ago. Never
smoked. Light drinker. Not overweight. Light exerciser. I breastfed both kids,
although not for a full year. Never took replacement hormones. Never worked in
a dangerous environment. Never had suspicious mammograms before. So on paper, I
was at very low risk as far as I can figure out. After I finished intensive
treatment, I was tested for BRCA1 and BRCA2 (because mutations there are
associated with cancer in both breasts) and no mutations were found. Unless or
until some new genetic markers are found and one of them applies to me, I think
we’ll never know why I got breast cancer, other than the fact that I’ve lived
long enough to get cancer. There was no lump. Even between the suspicious
mammogram and ultrasound and the biopsy, none of the doctors examining me could
feel a lump or anything irregular. It was a year ago this week that I got the
news that the first biopsy was positive. In some ways, because I feel really
good now, it’s hard to believe that this year ever happened. But in other ways,
the shock of it is still with me and with the whole family. Things are good for
now, though, and although I feel very unlucky that this happened in the first
place, I feel extremely lucky with the medical care I received and the support
I got from family and friends and especially my husband.
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Leslie Brunetta's articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Technology Review, and the Sewanee Review as well as on NPR and elsewhere. She is co-author, with Catherine L. Craig, of Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating (Yale University Press).