Of the 30,000 calls that flooded the Y-ME breast cancer hot line last year, up to 20 percent were from women with advanced disease.
The trouble was, counselors for the national breast cancer organization were stumped to find any supportive literature to bolster the callers.
“The information out there was very disheartening, very negative, and offered no hope at all,” says Michelle Melin, director of patient services for Y-ME. “We felt powerless because we had nothing to send.”
Melin spearheaded a project that led to “I Still Buy Green Bananas: Living with Hope, Living with Breast Cancer,” a pamphlet that has been distributed to 10,000 people since being published just seven months ago.
The 36-page booklet–winner of the American Medical Writers Association’s Rose Kushner Award for achievement in the field of breast cancer–delves into tough topics that face nearly every patient with advanced breast cancer. They include handling the news, treatment options, setting the tone with friends and family, and dealing with cancer pain and fears about death.
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Yet it conveys warmth, hope and a realistic, “I’m-in-it-with-you” tone in the personal quotes of survivors that fill the margins of each page: “I remain optimistic since my cancer has metastasized (spread),” writes Rhoda Olenick. “I have lived, worked and traveled. I refuse to be a victim.”
Olenick, 70, was one of the 150 women who helped shape the booklet by responding to a Y-ME survey about the topic. The survivors ranged in age from 33 to 76, and they had been living with advanced cancer from anywhere from 2 months to 20 years.
One even unknowingly supplied the title in a survey answer. When asked how she plans for the future, knowing of the daily presence of cancer in her life, one survivor responded: “Quite frankly, it stinks. But I still buy green bananas.”
The booklet “gives a voice to women who were silenced,” added Melin, explaining that she got invaluable input from her friend Laura, who died of breast cancer shortly after “Green Bananas” was published. “It was my friend who brought home for me the meaning of the book. She wanted to live her life as fully as possible.”
Single copies of the booklet are available free by calling Y-ME at 800-221-2141.