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"There are certain stories you just don&amp;amp;#8217;t forget. Tracy Sondern&amp;amp;#8217;s, which ran in my first issue as editor of Glamour in 2001, is one of them. A makeup artist, Tracy, then 38, had found a breast lump while in bed with her husband, photographer Andrew Southam; she went on to endure three months of chemotherapy and 36 rounds of radiation&amp;amp;#8212; all while Andrew snapped the most graphic, wrenching black-and-white pictures of her experience. The image of Tracy, two days after her lumpectomy, stepping out of the shower, her right breast crisscrossed with stitches and her face wary and uncertain, stayed etched in my memory for years, as did Andrew&amp;amp;#8217;s handwritten caption: &amp;amp;#8220;Hair or no hair,&amp;amp;#8221; he wrote, &amp;amp;#8220;she is still beautiful.&amp;amp;#8221; I&amp;amp;#8217;ve often wondered about Tracy, and about the other women with cancer Glamour has profiled. So to commemorate Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we decided to revisit every woman we&amp;amp;#8217;d featured in a major story about breast cancer over the past two decades. The news, thank God, is good. Most of the women aren&amp;amp;#8217;t just surviving&amp;amp;#8212;they&amp;amp;#8217;re thriving, with new jobs, growing families and the bone-deep appreciation for life that a serious illness can bring. Tragically, two of the women we&amp;amp;#8217;d profiled&amp;amp;#8212;both of whom were very ill at the time&amp;amp;#8212;lost their fights with cancer. But for nine of the 11, breast cancer is a hurdle they&amp;amp;#8217;ve cleared, and they aren&amp;amp;#8217;t looking back. We wondered: Could these numbers really be typical? &amp;amp;#8220;Yes,&amp;amp;#8221; confirms Freya Schnabel, M.D., director of breast surgery at New York University Medical Center. &amp;amp;#8220;Breast cancer today is one of the most treatable malignancies a woman can have.&amp;amp;#8221; As Roxanne Patel Shepelavy reports, the breast cancer death rate is falling for the first time in years, and chemo and surgery are now less invasive than ever. But none of those advances happened magically. You made them possible. Over the past two decades, women like you urged the government and private donors to make research a priority&amp;amp;#8212;and began to take screening more seriously. (As Patel Shepelavy&amp;amp;#8217;s story shows, catching a cancerous lump early is crucial, so see your doctor promptly if you suspect something is wrong.) The payoff of this medical progress is enormous. A decade ago writer Julia Glass chronicled her treatment in these pages; since then, she&amp;amp;#8217;s written two critically acclaimed novels, had a second baby&amp;amp;#8212;and savored every second. &amp;amp;#8220;This is so corny, but it&amp;amp;#8217;s true: I think of all the summers and all the Octobers and all the Christmases, and all that I&amp;amp;#8217;ve gotten to experience 14 times over since I was diagnosed,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;I always feel amazingly fortunate. A few times a week, I look at my children and I just can&amp;amp;#8217;t believe, having had cancer, that I got to become a mother.&amp;amp;#8221; For breast cancer survivors, the news is now good. It&amp;amp;#8217;s up to you&amp;amp;#8212;and me, and all women&amp;amp;#8212;to make sure it gets even better. Cindi Leive, Editor-in-Chief Check out Erin Zammett Ruddy&amp;amp;#8217;s list of cancer charities to see how you can help Support Glamour photo director Suzanne Donaldson as she runs a marathon to help fund a cure"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2007/09/breast-cancer-stories>