Resources

Online references and articles we’ve found helpful:

• Breast Cancer (U.S. National Library of Medicine): There are two main types of breast cancer: ductal or lobular carcinoma. Breast cancer may be invasive or noninvasive. Over the course of a lifetime, 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.
• Stages of Breast Cancer (National Cancer Institute): The process used to find out whether the cancer has spread within the breast or to other parts of the body is called staging. The information gathered from the staging process determines the stage of the disease. It is important to know the stage in order to plan treatment.
• What to Say When Someone Has Cancer (American Cancer Society): Feeling insecure about how to communicate well with a family member, friend, neighbor, or co-worker who is facing cancer is quite common. And it’s especially confusing if you heard about the diagnosis “through the grapevine.”
• The Diagnosis (Xeni Jardin/BoingBoing): “I have breast cancer. A week ago, I had breast cancer, and the week before that, and the week before that. Maybe five, eight, even ten years ago, the first bad cell split inside me, secretly. But I didn’t know. This is how I arrived at knowing.”
• Cancer survival rate: What it means for your prognosis (Mayo Clinic): One of the questions many people ask when first diagnosed with cancer is about their prognosis. You might want to know whether your cancer is relatively easy or more difficult to cure. Your doctor can’t predict the future, but an estimate is possible based on the experiences of other people with the same cancer.

If you’ve found a site or article that you’ve found helpful as a friend of Jen’s, or something that you think will help Jen, please send it along!