
Hope and Triple Negative Breast Cancer: Now in Paperback
By Patricia Prijatel on October 8th, 2014 Categories: Symptoms & DiagnosisRemember when your doctor told you that you had breast cancer?
“Oh, yes,” you sigh.
And remember when your doctor told you it was an especially aggressive form called triple-negative, or estrogen negative?
“Oh, yes,” you shudder.
I suspect your reaction was like mine — confusion and terror.
Well, I was there eight years ago, and now, look what I have done. I survived. Eight …

Changing Paths
By Patricia Prijatel on February 6th, 2014 Categories: The Breast Cancer Journey[This was originally published on Positives About Negative on August 26, 2013.]
Old paths are such comforts. Losing them feels like losing the coziness of an old friendship.
Today we took a new path through the woods and got a bit lost. The familiar markers were gone and their comfort and clarity gone with them. That’s often the way with forging a trail — you …

(Un) Common Knowledge Transcript
By Patricia Prijatel on April 3rd, 2013 Categories: Day-to-Day MattersBelow is an edited version of the webinar I presented through the Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Foundation October 16, 2012. You can still get the actual webinar on the Foundation’s site. It was based on questions sent in from women with TNBC.
I was diagnosed with hormone negative breast cancer in 2006, and I’ve been studying this disease since then, reading research papers, interviewing experts and …

SABCS: A Recap of Triple-Negative Research
By Patricia Prijatel on December 11th, 2012 Categories: Symptoms & DiagnosisThe best news from the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is its emphasis on triple-negative breast cancer. There are so many papers presented on the subject that I can’t keep up. Those of us who have been hanging around this dance for a long time—I was diagnosed in 2006—remember the frustration of seeing and hearing little about this disease from researchers and nothing from …

Giving Thanks in My Seventh Decade
By Patricia Prijatel on July 18th, 2012 Categories: The Breast Cancer Journey[This was originally published on Positives About Negative on January 2, 2011.]
I turned 65 last week and I am not sure what to make of it. Yes, getting older is better than the alternative, as my bout with cancer made extremely clear. Still, that’s old. Medicare old. If I got robbed, the news story could very well describe me as elderly.
I was diagnosed …