Pink-Link
January 2010
Pink Power
In This Issue
Exercise
Breast Cancer Trials
Financial Help
Getting in Shape

Exercise for Women with Lymphedema
Our very own Gail Pekelis, Pink-Link Lymphedema expert, teamed up with Jodi Winicour, PT, CMT, CLT-LANA at Longmont United Hospital to write an article about the findings in a new study regarding exercise for women with Lymphedema.

Read the article
Breast Cancer Trials
Dermalogica logo
Are you a breast cancer survivor? Were you recently diagnosed with breast cancer? If so, you should know about BreastCancerTrials.org, the only clinical trial matching service exclusively dedicated to breast cancer.

Read about their website.
Financial Help
One of the things I learned in San Antonio is that some of the pharmaceutical companies have a financial assistance program for patients using their medications. In the Pink Power newsletter, I'll periodically highlight a company and what they have to offer. This month it's Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK). Here's an introduction from their website: GSK patient assistance programs provided medicines valued at almost $388 million (Wholesale Acquisition Cost) to more than 484,000 patients during 2007. "GSK For You" features information on patient assistance programs from other resources, too. Please browse our site to see if you may be eligible to save on your prescription drugs. GSK is here to assist you with your prescription drug coverage needs.
Greetings!

My pink photoHappy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and wish for you and your family a very happy and healthy New Year. My holiday was filled with family and movies. My husband and I got all caught up with the current movies and even saw some old ones that were on our list. My daughter is still in town, she goes back to college in a couple of weeks, and my son has returned to 10th grade.

So, now it's time to get back to my passion. I attended the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December and had a fantastic time! I reconnected with many advocate friends and met new ones as well. I'll be posting an article or two about some of the new studies and what they have shown in each Pink Power this year. See below for the first one and read a summary of my experience. I recently bought a Flip camcorder so I can video tape Pink-Linkers at some of the conferences I attend. I tried it out on my fellow advocates and you can watch the video by clicking here.

On January 19th, I'll be flying to Washington DC to be a part of the Department of Defense's Breast Cancer Research Program Consumer Review Panel. I've been assigned 8 grant proposals, which I am to critique and score, and will then present my opinion to the rest of the panel. I'm so excited to actually have a hand in the funding decision making process!

On a final note, I want to thank our sponsors for including Pink-Link in their charitable giving plans. Dermalogica has been a sponsor since 2006 and provides monetary support, raffle prizes and Anet King, our skin care expert. FHI Heat has been a Pink-Link sponsor since 2007 and provides monetary support as well as periodic gifts for raffle prizes.

Now that the holidays are over, is your stress over as well? CureToday.com has a fantastic article about stress in cancer survivors.

Have a wonderful month!
 
Sincerely,
 
Victoria Tashman
Pink-Link
310-995-5204
www.pink-link.org
Getting in Shape for 2010
For our November contest, we had 5 RangeMaster Shoulder Kits donated. We asked our members to tell us about their current exercise regimen and what they planned to add or change in the coming year. We had a number of responses, but here are the responses from our winners. Most of the replies were just a couple of lines, but a couple of them really went into detail! Thanks for the inspiring words, Ladies, and I hope we all start or continue on an exercise program this year!

Get inspired!
Controversies in Chemotherapy as presented at the SABCS 2009
Many women diagnosed with Breast Cancer undergo adjuvant chemotherapy as part of their treatment plan. With today's medical advancements however, a number of questions have arisen: do some of these women need chemotherapy at all? Do all women receive the same protective benefits from chemotherapy? And, once the decision to have chemotherapy has been made, what are the best and most highly effective regimens?