Emma Helps Cancer Patients
- Actress Emma Stone, 32, was recently honored at a benefit for Gilda’s Club; named for the late Gilda Radner, who died of ovarian cancer, the organization helps cancer patients.
- Stone was 19 years old when her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.
- Treatments for breast cancer include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, immunotherapy.
"Do You Wanna Shave My Head?": How a Mother and Daughter Bonded Over a Cancer Milestone
Treating Breast Cancer
While we don't know much about Stone's mom's specific breast cancer type (i.e. stage one, stage two), we can provide some insight into the different ways in which the disease can be treated.
Treatment varies from person to person and is dependent upon the cancer’s stage and development. Your doctor will work with you to determine the best course of treatment action for your individual case. Breast cancer is typically treated by surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or immunotherapy.
Related: Breaking Down the Major Shift in Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer
Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, explained for SurvivorNet in a previous interview the factors that go into determining a breast cancer patient’s treatment path. She says, “There are many, many different types of therapies that are available for women that are diagnosed with breast cancer. Usually, the first thing that I do when I look through a patient’s chart is look through their pathology report.”
Related: Overview: Breast Cancer Treatment
Dr. Comen says she asks herself when assessing treatment options, “What’s the biology of the cancer? How big is it? How many lymph nodes were involved? What drives the cancer? Is it driven by hormones, maybe some other factors? Were you born with an increased risk of breast cancer? And what about your lifestyle? Were there other things in your life that may have increased your risk for breast cancer? And how can we modify those moving forward to decrease your risk of the cancer coming back?”
Related: Risk Factors for Breast Cancer
“That’s really what makes treating breast cancer such an exciting and hopeful field today,” says Dr. Comen, “there are so many different ways that we can target and think about treating breast cancer patients, no matter what stage of the disease that they’ve been diagnosed with.”
Dr. Komen Provides an Overview of Breast Cancer Treatment Options
Coping with a Parent’s Diagnosis
Learning that your parent has cancer, as Stone did at 19, can feel like a gut-punch. As children, we often see your parents as invincible, so a cancer diagnosis can really affect us deep in our core.
Related: 'I Wanted to Keep Things with My Kids as Normal as Possible' Lisa Schaible Survivor Story
Coping with the feelings that accompany a loved one’s cancer diagnosis can be helped with resources like therapy, support groups, and the support of friends, family, and even for some faith and spirituality.
Camila Legaspi tells SurvivorNet: “Therapy Saved My Life”
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