where discovery creates hope

It was hard for Bridget to tell the people she loved that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer. Now, six years free of the frightening disease, the St. Paul woman has two compelling reasons to share her experience with everybody.

For one, she wants to encourage women to get that mammogram so crucial to early detection – and successful treatment.

And for another: She wants to give a shout out to clinical trials from the University of Minnesota Medical School.

They’re all about introducing novel new medicine, medicine administered by a team that, in Bridget’s case, made all the difference in the world.

Says Bridget: “I wouldn’t be here without them.”

Adds Dr. Anne Blaes, a medical oncologist at Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota who was with Bridget every step of the way: “She helped us advance the science. We learned that, with the type of cancer she had, immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy, actually triples the complete response rate.”

It was no accident that Bridget wound up seeing Dr. Blaes.

Her aunt had been a University of Minnesota nurse for some 30 years and was well acquainted with Dr. Blaes’ boundary-pushing work.

Twenty-four hours after that initial diagnosis, Bridget, along with her mom and aunt, sat face to face with a doctor whose passion for the work has made her director for the hematology, oncology, and transplant division at the University of Minnesota.

Over the next five years, through the medicines, the surgeries, and, yes, the complications, Dr. Blaes and Bridget formed a bond that, when “it was time to fly,” was hard to break.

Says Bridget: “I talked to her about everything in my life during treatment - not just things related to cancer.”

Adds Dr. Blaes: “Patients are a gift. They tell us stuff that they often don’t tell family – especially when it comes to fear.”

Bridget is thankful she listened to her regular doctor and scheduled a mammogram. Family history gave her no reason to suspect that she might have breast cancer. And “her spot” was so small there was no way she could’ve found it on her own.

Dr. Blaes offered Bridget two paths: standard of care treatment with approved medicines or a clinical trial with promising new medicines only available at academic institutions like the Masonic Cancer Center and the U of M.

For Bridget, the decision was a no-brainer: “I just felt this safety net with Dr. Blaes and her team.”

Breast cancer, Dr. Blaes says, is a complex puzzle to solve. Some forms of it, for instance, are slow growing. Others, like Bridget’s, are aggressive.

Much progress, however, has been made – even just within Dr. Blaes’ career. In fact, with new medicine helping breast cancer patients live longer, one of the focuses of her research is “survivorship and supportive care.”

For her, that effort boils down to “hope.” Hope that researchers can find better medicines with fewer side effects so patients can live well.

That’s especially important for those not as fortunate as Bridget whose cancer, at least at this point, can’t be cured.

Says Dr. Blaes: “They’re more about the quality of their days than the quantity. Can I live to see my child’s next event?”

Through her treatment, Bridget discovered she had a gene that gave her a 40-85% chance of developing cancer compared to the 12% risk of the general population. It also made her highly susceptible to ovarian cancer. So, in addition to mastectomies, she had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.

Those precautions, as well as the success of her treatment, have made her worry-free as far as a cancer relapse.

She even took something positive from the harrowing experience. Says Bridget: “I don’t sweat the small stuff anymore. I just think it’s important to love the people around you and take the trip. Take the chance. Because life can be short.”