On the pulse...for people affected by breast cancer

On the pulse

Cancerkin News…
A roaring success…
Saturday evening marked the long awaited arrival of our summer fundraiser; a performance of La Boheme at the Soho Theatre London. With a full house, a champagne and canapés reception followed by a cutting edge adaptation of an opera classic, the evening was a success all round. We would like to thank everyone who attended and made the event what it was. Congratulations to Juliet Wheldon who won a box at the English National Opera in our raffle. Thank you also to all of you who made a donation towards this cause- it is greatly appreciated! Be sure to keep an eye out on the website for a full report on how the evening went and how much was raised.

Internet problems
Technology failed Cancerkin this week with the whole office grinding to a halt after our BT broadband stopped working on last Monday. The problems lasted throughout the week until BT fixed the problem at their exchange over the weekend, consequently we may not have received your emails last week. Thankfully, as of yesterday morning Cancerkin’s internet was restored allowing us to receive and send our emails as well as updating our database. We are sorry if we didn’t return emails or for any inconvenience caused.

Cancerkin’s East London Project update…
As we mentioned last month, Cancerkin have started running monthly free complementary therapy sessions in East London. Today, we held our second successful session at St Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney with over 30 women from all over East London benefiting from the range of complementary therapies. The day consisted of one-to-one therapy sessions of Reflexology, Reiki and Soul Therapy and group sessions of Art Therapy and a demo session of a Look Good Feel Better workshop.

Cancerkin has not worked alone in its East London outreach and would like to thank the Newham, Homerton, St Bartholomew and Whipps Cross hospitals and our local partner organisations for all their support in making this session a success.


In The News….
Cleaning Products
New research this week has shown that regularly using household cleaning products and air fresheners increases the risk of breast cancer by up to 110%. The study of 1508 women, 787 of whom were diagnosed with breast cancer, asked them to recall how often and what sorts of household products they used. Tests have shown that cleaning products often contain chemicals which are linked to cancer; however these links have never been proved. More research is needed to prove the findings which are being questioned due to the way in which the results were obtained. The women with cancer may have been more accurate or even over exaggerate their use of these products as they search for a reason for their illness. Read the full story here.

Abortion
In the 1st July issue of ‘On the pulse’, we published a link to a story written in the Daily Mail about whether abortions are associated with a higher risk of breast cancer. In response, our Medical Director, consultant breast surgeon Tim Davidson, has drawn our attention to an article he wrote in ‘The Lancet’. In this article he examines the published evidence supporting and refuting this hypothesis and concludes that there is, to date, insufficient evidence to justify warning women of future breast cancer risk when counselling them about abortion. The full article will be placed on the Cancerkin website during the next week.