Plea For Black Women Who Have Breast Cancer

Lori Wilson is a surgical oncologist at Howard University Medical Center in Washington. She is also a breast cancer survivor and black woman. Wilson made the point that any woman or man who had gone through chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery had faced difficult times.

Throughout her experience as an oncologist she had seen that black women faced a greater challenge because their breast cancer is different. Breast cancer tumors in black women are more aggressive that other women and men’s breast cancer, and normal screenings don’t catch tumors soon enough.

Though she feels screening and treatments were great in the fight against breast cancer, she also felt they weren’t enough and more needed to be done. Wilson feels screening and treatment needs to start earlier.

More research dollars are needed specifically to identify why breast cancer acts the way it does in black women, and more tools are needed for earlier diagnosis. Though treatments are good, they need to get better.

Tags: cancer awareness