The Conference in Philadelphia

The morning of the first day began with registration. There was a flurry of activity … people were chatting, looking at exhibits and enjoying a yummy continental breakfast. There was a lot of excitement in the air.

The day began with Judy E Garber, MD, MPH who spoke on treating advanced breast cancer including medical and research news. She only spoke a few sentences when she broke down in tears. It happened when she started to speak about a breast cancer patient she’d been treating for many many years. They had exhausted all treatment options and this ladies journey was coming to an end. 

In the afternoon, Judy E Garber spoke again. This time she focused on treatments and strategies of bone mets.

After a short break we had author Bruce Feiler speak on his experience with bone cancer and author Donna Deegan spoke on her experience with metastatic breast cancer. 

On the second day, I attended a session given by Linda T Vahdat, MD on the treatments and strategies of liver and lung mets. 

After that there was only one more session and that included a panel of five experts with expertise in metastatic breast cancer. The panel addressed a variety of concerns including medical and complimentary therapies, symptom and side-effect management and emotional and legal issues. 

There were many other sessions offered but we picked and chose what interested us most. To be honest, I was overwhelmed with the amount of information offered. The Living Beyond Breast Cancer organizers said they’d be offering podcasts of the sessions but I checked today and nothing is on the website as of yet. I’ll continue checking and let you know when they appear. Here is a link to their blog where they give an overview of the conference.