A booth featuring metastatic ILC (mILC) literature and highlighting the metastatic disease information available on LBCA’s website was tended all day on Saturday, April 18 by Jade Moran, a patient advocate living with mILC, and by Dr. Kathryn Krantz, a retired clinician who is an LBCA Board member and also an ILC patient. Jade and Kathy spent the day handing out relevant literature and answering myriad questions from conference attendees (whose number totaled in the hundreds!). While they were surprised at the number of patients who were not aware of the lobular subtype or of whether their disease fell into this category, they were also heartened by the number of mILC patients they met who were very aware of LBCA’s advocacy and research initiatives, and by the number of patients with non-lobular disease who took information to give to lobular patients they knew in their local advocacy groups. It was truly a gratifying experience for LBCA’s representatives to be able to share awareness about mILC in this manner and on this scale.
Jade Moran shared, “I first attended “Thriving Together” a few years ago, not long after I was diagnosed with de novo metastatic ILC. It was a hard time and the information I got was a lifeline. I loved that the atmosphere was engaging and celebratory—not exactly what I expected from a conference about MBC! This is why I jumped at the chance to share LBCA’s message and resources at this year’s conference. I thought that this community would be particularly receptive and curious about ILC. Coming together with people who share your unique experience is powerful.”
Kathy an Jade both agreed they were thrilled to make connections with the individuals, advocates, healthcare professionals and researchers in attendance and look forward to sharing this experience with LBBC again in the future.
Learn more about how you can get involved with advocacy at LBCA here.