Day chosen to recognize breast cancer

Buffalo Grove will join other cities nationwide in declaring one day this month as Metastatic Breast Cancer Day.

Village President Elliott Hartstein will read the declaration today to retroactively recognize the day Oct. 13.

Ruth Silverman of Buffalo Grove heard that Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, was reading a similar declaration there and wanted to have the issue brought to Illinois. The day also coincides with a conference by the Metastatic Breast Cancer Network in New York.

Silverman said she's also asked Chicago Mayor Richard Daley to dedicate the day to bring awareness to metastatic breast cancer, which means the disease has recurred or spread to different portions of the body.

"More and more people live now long enough so that (breast cancer) will metastasize," Silverman said.

"Today what is wonderful and very positive and hopeful for people who have metastatic breast cancer is that there are new medications out there, and they need to be aware of that."

According to the Metastatic Breast Cancer network, 150,000 women in the United States have the recurring form of the cancer.

It also affects about 30 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer, Deborah Axelrod, associate professor of surgery at the New York University School of Medicine, said in a press release.

Silverman, who has been battling the recurring breast cancer, said she's taken an optimistic view on the disease. She writes a column for the Daily Herald's Health and Fitness on living with cancer.

"My doctor said, 'I've put you into remission before, and I will do it again,' " Silverman said. "New medications are coming out every time you blink, and people can think of this not as gloom and doom and not as a death sentence."