On Women

Chronic inflammation, long known as the scourge that turns arteries into plaque magnets, may also predict whether breast cancer is likely to recur. That's according to a new finding published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The researchers found that breast cancer patients with high levels of inflammation had about twice the risk of experiencing a relapse and of dying sooner from their cancer than those with low levels of the markers. "Inflammation may encourage tumors to grow or promote the development of blood vessels that allow cancer cells to spread," says study coauthor Rachel Ballard-Barbash, associate director of the applied research program at the National Cancer Institute.

The study measured two inflammation markers in the blood: high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP) and serum amyloid A (SAA). Both are checked by doctors to assess heart disease risk; in fact, the CRP screen has become widely popular, especially after a study published last year found that treating high CRP levels with statin drugs could prevent heart attacks and strokes. The new study is intriguing because it "provides some of the most persuasive evidence yet that chronic inflammation might increase the risk of breast cancer recurrence," Steven Cole, a cancer researcher at the UCLA School of Medicine, writes in an editorial that accompanied the study. The researchers took into account other factors that could increase relapse risk, such as the size and type of tumor, a woman's age, and whether she was overweight.

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Even as the recent brouhaha over the opposition by Miss California, Carrie Prejean, to gay marriage continues to get attention—she claims it cost her the Miss USA crown—I'm struck by another gay rights controversy heating up this week. Should lesbians have the right to visit their life partners in the hospital? Two lawsuits have been filed that say a hospital has a legal obligation to grant visitation to a patient's designated loved ones or next of kin. Both patients at the centers of these cases lay dying without their partners at their bedside even though they'd signed advanced directives and power-of-attorney documents designating these partners as decision makers for them, according to the New York Times.

It seems to me that hospital visitation rights should be a no-brainer—and far less controversial than gay marriage, with all of matrimony's religious connotations. Why shouldn't lesbian patients have the same right as anyone else to have their partners holding their hand in the hospital? One woman wasn't allowed to sleep in her dying partner's room even though the hospital typically permitted spouses to sleep over. Another couldn't enter the shock trauma area where her partner was being treated for a burst aneurysm.

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Everyone's preparing for health reform. Financier and publisher Steve Forbes warned this morning that President Obama's nationalized health insurance plans to be unveiled next month will cause a "summer flu of unprecedented severity." And healthcare lobbyists have been trudging up to Capitol Hill daily to offer up their solutions for our healthcare crisis.

Karen Greenrose, president and CEO of the American Association of Preferred Provider Organizations, who treks in from Louisville, Ky., every week, tells me health reform is desperately needed, though she'd rather it be left largely in the hands of industry than those of government. Her organization—which represents PPO health insurance plans, through which nearly 70 percent of Americans receive their healthcare—has a detailed health reform proposal. But when I met with her last week, I asked specifically for her take on women and their health needs.

Brandishing a new report issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, I asked to know how health reform will address gender disparities cited in the report. It found that only 48 percent of working women are able to get health coverage at work compared with 57 percent of men. (That's mainly because women are more likely to work part time, which leaves them ineligible for insurance.) Single women are twice as likely to be uninsured as married women, since the former can't rely on a spouse for insurance. Making matters worse, many of the 14 million women who purchase individual insurance on their own are charged higher premiums than men who buy the same coverage. That's justified, managed-care companies say, by the fact that women visit doctors more often, have higher healthcare costs, and face the possibility of future pregnancies and hospitalizations to give birth.

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Nancy Lumb didn't cry when she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year or when she had to give her husband and mother the news. The tears fell when she looked in the mirror at her balding head, dry yellow skin, and thinning eyebrows and eyelashes. "The chemotherapy robbed me of the person that I was," says the 41-year-old corporate services executive from Chevy Chase, Md. "I wanted to look like my old self, to know that people could see beyond my cancer."

Her oncology nurse told her about a free workshop called Look Good...Feel Better where a beauty professional would teach her how to apply makeup to smooth her skin, cover her under-eye circles, and make her eyelashes and brows look fuller. She also learned the art of fitting a wig, applying hairpieces under a baseball cap, and wrapping a head scarf. She says she was amazed by the results—how the techniques she learned helped her look like her old self again. Check out the before and after photos for yourself.

Before

After

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