Julie Yamamoto

According to this study – and the fact that I generally lived by the tips on the infographic — I should have been at low risk for cancer in general. Though I understand the need for optimism and see the value in charting progress, none of it explains why — if you do the math — 50% to 70% of cancers don’t seem to be preventable, at least not by controlling the factors listed in the infographic. During this month, which honors cancer prevention, I’ve been reading a book that, at first glance, doesn’t seem directly related to the topic: Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. Reading Silent Spring reminded me of the environmental chemicals I was exposed to over the years (weed killers, insecticides, household cleaners, chlorine in swimming pools), some of which I had control over and most of which I didn’t (DDT wasn’t banned in the U. S. till 1972, when I was 12).

According to the American Cancer Society, more than 15 million people in the United States have been designated as cancer survivors in 2016. Unlike that of the male staff member I’d been talking with, a bald head on a woman is often a telltale sign of cancer treatment. In our short conversation, the staff member noted that Jo was being treated for cancer, at which point Jo interjected “breast cancer,” and quickly summarized the treatment she’d begun: surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. The staff member commented that Jo’s dog would certainly like that, and they both laughed.

This is the light that was hanging in the corner of a hotel room in Portland, Oregon, where I happened to be when I got the news about the death of Brian Doyle. I never met him face-to-face, but I first met his writing in a short essay called “ Because of my work editing neurosurgical articles, some about the type of tumor he had, I knew too well that Mr. Doyle’s conjuring would end too soon. That is the singular, powerful effect Brian Doyle’s words have had on me – revealing and enlarging the inner light in all of us, bound up together as we are.

My apologies to Shakespeare for the skewed headline, but that’s the first thing that came to mind when I read the results of a recent report on a perennially confusing topic for those of us who have had breast cancer: whether eating soy products is helpful or harmful. Eating a soy-rich diet found to reduce mortality for women with more aggressive breast cancers Consuming more foods rich in isoflavones, a compound primarily found in soy beans, was found to decrease the risk of death of women diagnosed with some types of breast cancer. Mortality was 51% lower for women with hormone receptor negative breast cancers which are more aggressive and have poorer survival. The golden words from the summary are: Mortality was 51% lower for women with hormone receptor negative breast cancers.