Kate Zickel

How do I identify myself on the show? I'm from Alexandria, Virginia. I run a digital marketing agency out of my home. Married, which is awesome.

Let me put it this way. Were it not for the advances in medical technology that have happened just in the last five to ten years, I may not be here.

Went through chemo, radiation, double mastectomy and reconstruction surgery. It took about a year from September of 2017 to September of 2018. And then after that, thought I was in remission. Took hormone suppressors for two years before being diagnosed with a recurrence at stage four metastatic disease after it had moved to my bones and my lungs.

Yeah. So I've had metastatic cancer for almost five years. And the thing about metastatic breast cancer now is that it's not always the immediate death sentence that it used to be. You can actually live a pretty long time with metastatic breast cancer depending on where it is in your body and how quickly it grows.

So I was originally diagnosed with breast cancer at 29 years old. No family history at all. No indications that that would be a thing in my life. And, you know, you just hear, you know, you hear all the ads and the awareness about self-checks that you should do. And we typically don't recommend mammograms until the age of 40 or actually 50, really.

But they're starting to change that now that we're seeing more and more young women diagnosed with breast cancer. So I was pretty young. I was 29 and then I was, I think, 37. three when my recurrence was diagnosed.

Yeah, people definitely still have the idea that a cancer patient looks wan and thin and pale. And people tend to have a very specific idea in mind when they think of cancer patients. And because cancer treatments have changed so drastically, even just in the last 10 years... It's actually very different now. I looked normal. You wouldn't know.

But I was still in the middle of all of these crazy, painful processes. It's a good thing. We're very grateful that those technologies exist now where we can be in treatment and look great. But just because we look great doesn't mean that we are. And sometimes that can be difficult to explain.

I would say don't freak out until a medical professional tells you to freak out.

Know your own body. Most of us do anyway, but know your body. Know what your normal feels like. And then if something isn't normal— ask. And if your doctors ignore you, which most doctors are great and they will take you seriously, but if they don't, get a second opinion. Get a third opinion. Ask. Take the time out of work to go to those appointments if you need to. Do your own homework.

Get a genetic test. You can do that. They'll take a blood test and they'll go through your genetics and they'll tell you what your risk factors are. The treatment I am on now is came into existence between 2017 and 2020. The one that I will go on next came out five years ago. The changes and the speed at which medical technology is keeping pace is incredible.

We are so lucky to live in a time where that is true. The goal here is to beat the clock. where as a survivor now who's on treatment, my goal is to make the current treatment I'm on last as long as possible so that the next treatment I'm on will be available. And then that one will last a long time until we've got a new study that proves another drug that's available. And

As long as we're able to keep pace with that, the longer we live. So I would just encourage anybody who's kind of curious about this, do your homework. Ask your doctors. Those clinical trials are out there, and we need them. We are desperate for them. We are dying without them. And anybody who wants to cut funding to those trials can just give me a call.

Without these trials, people will die. Without these trials, people will not live as long as they could with them. Without these trials, you are taking away the hope of others. Sorry, I'm like shaking now. I'm like so angry about this. The people who are funding these trials need to understand that it is part of their job.

to keep us alive, to keep us hopeful, to keep our medication moving forward. By taking that away from us, you're killing, you're literally killing us. By taking that away from us, you are taking away years that we could have with our children, years that we could spend with our parents. If you take away the trials that gave us the drugs that help us live longer, You need to answer for that.

You need to be held accountable to the people whose lives you are hurting. Sorry, I didn't realize how passionate I was about that until you asked me the question and I'm like, oh, I'm really angry.