October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And this year, we have something extraordinary to celebrate alongside it.
But first, let’s talk about the fight.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in the United States. And for decades, a diagnosis felt like stepping into uncertainty, not knowing if the treatments available would be enough, not knowing what the road ahead would look like, not knowing if hope was a reasonable thing to hold onto.
Nurses knew that uncertainty intimately. Because they sat in it with their patients. They held hands through chemotherapy infusions. They answered the questions that came at 2 a.m. They were present for the fear and for the fight. Long before the treatments we have today existed, nurses showed up. And they showed up with everything they had.
What has happened since is nothing short of remarkable.
Survival rates for breast cancer have improved dramatically over the past several decades. Early detection through mammography has saved countless lives. Targeted therapies have made it possible to treat breast cancer with greater precision and fewer devastating side effects. Immunotherapy has changed the landscape of what is possible.
UAMS is home to the first and only proton therapy center in this state. Only the 43rd in the entire nation. Proton therapy targets tumors with extraordinary precision, destroying cancer cells while sparing the surrounding healthy tissue in ways that traditional radiation simply cannot match. For breast cancer patients, that precision matters profoundly. It means less damage to the heart. Less damage to the lungs. A fighting chance that is cleaner, more targeted, and more hopeful than anything Arkansas patients have had access to before without leaving home to get it.
Here is what I want every person reading this to understand: every single one of those advances, every targeted therapy, every proton beam, every clinical trial, every breakthrough means nothing without the people who sit beside the patient receiving it. Technology advances the treatment. People advance the healing. Those are two different things. And both are necessary.
The care team member explains what proton therapy means in language a frightened patient can hold onto. The one who notices that something has shifted emotionally and makes time to sit. The one who coordinates the care, advocates for the patient, and makes sure that the most advanced treatment in the nation is also the most humanizing experience it can possibly be. That person is you.
To every member of the oncology care team at UAMS nurses, physicians, radiation therapists, medical physicists, pharmacists, researchers, patient care technicians, social workers, navigators, and every support staff member who has ever played a role in a breast cancer patient’s journey thank you.
Thank you for learning every new treatment, so your patients don’t have to face it alone. Thank you for the years of research that made these advances possible. Thank you for the precision of your craft and the warmth of your presence. Thank you for the early mornings and the late nights and the moments in between that no one ever sees but the patient who needed you most.
Cancer care is not a solo performance. It is a symphony. Every role matters. Every contribution counts. Every person on that care team is the reason a patient gets to go home, hold their family, and live the life they fought so hard to keep.
Wear your UAMS pink this month. Say the names of the survivors you know. Honor the ones still fighting. And look around at the people you work alongside every day because together, you are the reason hope is not just a feeling. It is an outcome.
Betty Ford, one of breast cancer awareness’s most courageous early voices, said it best: “You can make it, but it’s easier if you don’t have to do it alone.”
No patient at UAMS has to do it alone. Not with this team. Not with this technology. Not with this level of commitment to their healing.
The most advanced cancer center in Arkansas is here. The treatments are here. The technology is here.
And so are you. All of you. Together. That is what makes all of it work.
