Since I first came to hear and understand the challenges of living with metastatic breast cancer (MBC), the most central theme has been awareness. From accurate and specific awareness can flow better reserach, greater understanding, expanded support, and so much more. But without true awareness of the complex and weighty challenges faced by MBC patients, the world can hide behind pink and patients remain in the closet.
Enter Miss You Already, a soon-to-be-released film by director Catherine Hardwicke and staring Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette. I think it’s a MUST SEE – not just for breast cancer patients, but for everyone….
Miss You Already tells the story of best friends – one unable to get pregnant, the other a mother of two young children diagnosed with TNBC which eventually spreads to her brain. We can all surmise the ending.
As we, the MBC community, focus our efforts on reaching well beyond our own numbers and our inner circles, sitting at the heart of a big screen Hollywood movie is a critical opportunity to help the public understand what it’s like from our side. And there was every chance it could have been a diaster, with more pink fluff, more happy endings, more sugar-coated bullshit. It’s not that, not at all!
In the years I have been dealing with MBC, I’ve never before felt that my story was being told. This time, it’s exactly my story – evidence that we are being heard, noticed, at last. Like Toni Collette’s character, I was first diagnosed as a young mother. I expereinced similar strainded relationships, discomfort, the idiosyncrasies and ironies, the profound ways it changes your life and your relationships, and the fight to find the “new normal.” Writer, director, actors – they have undertaken an incredible effort to remain true to the patient experience, and they have executed it brilliantly.
Is it perfect? No…but it addresses countless minutia that could only be familiar to those who have walked in our shoes. I am honored to have been invited to preview the film, and hope you will check it out!
Opening Thursday at a theater near you…I give it 5 Kleneexs. Let’s see if we can give it a stronger opening than 007!
regrounding 
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