CURE Magazine Features Candid Discussion with Journalist Joan Lunden on Her Personal Journey with Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
When award-winning journalist Joan Lunden was first diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, she opted to embrace an atypical treatment regimen-chemotherapy first, then surgery, rather than the reverse, she revealed in an interview with CURE, the largest cancer magazine in the nation.
PLAINSBORO, N.J. (Feb. 5, 2015)—When award-winning journalist Joan Lunden was first diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, she opted to embrace anatypical treatment regimen—chemotherapy first, then surgery, rather than the reverse, she revealed in an interview with CURE™, the largest cancer magazine in the nation.
Lunden’s story will appear in the Winter 2015 issue of CURE, available in mid-February. Published by CURE Media Group of Plainsboro, N.J., the quarterly magazine is free for patients, survivors, and caregivers. Readers can subscribe for free at www.curetoday.com/view/subscribe.
The CURE magazine profile provides an in-depth look into Lunden’s experiences in dealing with breast cancer and features insights from that personal journey, such as choosing to work during treatment and wearing a wig.
A more typical regimen would be having surgery to remove the tumor and following that with chemotherapy and radiation, Lunden told CURE. In her case, choosing chemotherapy first made the surgery much less invasive. “The much smaller tumor was gone. It had been completely eradicated, and the bigger one had been shrunk by about 70 percent,” she told CURE.
Now in the final stages of treatment, with radiation therapy nearly concluded, Lunden is on the go, speaking to women and the healthcare community about her experiences and learnings. She has been documenting her treatment on her website, JoanLunden.com, and will be speaking about the cancer patient’s perspective to an audience of the nation’s top oncologists at the32nd Annual Miami Breast Cancer Conference. Lunden’s address will take place on Sat., Feb. 28, at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Fla., where copies of CURE magazine featuring Lunden will be available to participants.
“One of my great passions is to make women more aware of their bodies, their breasts,” said Lunden. Based on her own experience, she stressed the importance of women knowing if they have dense breast tissue, which makes detection of breast cancer by mammogram difficult. Fortunately for Joan, she had learned years earlier that an ultrasound can be an important second check for women with dense breast tissue. In the CURE interview, she described how her annual mammogram missed her breast cancer, but an ultrasound was able to pinpoint the tumors.
(Watch video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUrFKC0mcx8)
“Had I walked out of that radiology lab that day only having a mammogram, I would have gone about my merry way—‘I’m fine’—and I would have had a fast-growing, virulent, rare form of breast cancer in my right breast,”she said. Instead, the ultrasound revealed a 2.3-centimeter tumor quickly progressing near her chest wall, and a smaller one growing in front of that, Lunden shared in the CURE article.
Lunden also discussed the physical and emotional effects of breast cancer treatment in a recent interview featured on CURE’s website, www.curetoday.com/view/a-two-way-street-joan-lunden-shares-her-cancer-experience.
Those wishing to receive the free Winter 2015 issue of CURE magazine with the Joan Lunden cover story should subscribe online at www.curetoday.com/subscribe or call 1-800-210-2878.
About CURE Magazine and CURE Media Group
CURE Media Group’s flagship product, CURE magazine, is the indispensable guide to every stage of the cancer experience. With nearly 1 million readers, CURE is the largest consumer publication in the United States focused entirely on cancer, with broad distribution to cancer patients, cancer centers, and advocacy groups. Through the magazine, live meetings, a resource guide for the newly diagnosed, the Extraordinary Healersm national nursing award, and other books and online tools, CURE Media Group combines science and humanity to make cancer understandable. CURE Media Group is part of the Plainsboro, N.J.-based Michael J. Hennessy Associates, Inc. (MJH) family of businesses, which includes the acclaimed OncLive (www.onclive.com) platform of resources for the practicing oncologist. For more information, visit www.curetoday.com or www.mjhlifesciences.com.
About Joan Lunden
Joan Lunden was the co-host of Good Morning America for nearly two decades, reporting from 26 countries on a diverse range of stories from presidential elections to the Olympics. Her bestselling books include Joan Lunden’s Healthy Cooking, Joan Lunden’s Healthy Living, Wake-Up Calls, and A Bend in the Road Is Not the End of the Road. Joan speaks all over the country about health & wellness, inspiration, and success.Her website, JoanLunden.com, has quickly become a go-to source of information for women, bringing together experts on a myriad of topics relevant totoday’s woman, such as health, boomers, caregiving, and family. In October, Joan joined NBC’s TODAY show as a special correspondent for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the show continues to follow her breast cancer journey on the air.
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Media contacts for CURE Media Group:
Becky Taylor, 609.240.6886 or becky@btaylorpa.com
Silas Inman, 609.716.7777 or sinman@onclive.com
