Secondary breast cancer

Dear Editor Last Thursday was Secondary Breast Cancer Awareness Day – 24 hours devoted to shining a spotlight on the final stage of this devastating and common disease.

Almost 1,000 women in the UK die of breast cancer every year and the majority of these deaths are caused by secondary breast cancer, when the disease has spread to other parts of the body.

It’s estimated that there are 35,000 people in the UK with secondary breast cancer.

Women living with secondary breast cancer often tell us they feel like a forgotten group.

They want more discussion and awareness of the challenges that they face. That’s why we’ve launched our‘Dear Breast Cancer’ campaign.

Our amazing supporter Lesley Stephen kick-started the campaign with a powerful letter to her breast cancer tumour. It’s an honest, powerful and thoughtprovoking account of living with secondary breast cancer.

So how can your readers help? We want people to read Lesley’s letter on our website and, if they feel inspired, to write about their own experience of secondary breast cancer.

Every letter we receive helps us to highlight what it means to have breast cancer or to have lost someone to the disease.

At Breast Cancer Now we spend almost a fifth of our funding on secondary breast cancer research. We’re committed to our aim that by 2050 no one will die of breast cancer, but we can’t do this alone.

Please join us and help to raise the profile of secondary breast cancer. Write your own letter at http:// breastcancernow.org/ news-and-blogs/blogs/ dear-breast-cancer Mary Allison, Director for Scotland, Breast Cancer Now