Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 6, 1994 TAG: 9402060096
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ADRIENNE PETTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SNOW CREEK LENGTH: Medium
"It's a good thing I have thick eyebrows," she says, giggling as she strokes her striking, arched brows. "If I can keep an upbeat attitude, then that's 50 percent of the recovery."
Summoning laughs and a lilting spirit, the 44-year-old Snow Creek woman is soldiering on against breast cancer, and fighting for insurance benefits she says she deserves.
She is but one warrior in the battle.
Across the state, a legislative firefight has been smoldering for three years between insurers and women with breast cancer who say they should be compensated for bone marrow and stem cell transplants.
The treatment that Adams seeks - a bone marrow transplant - is not covered by insurers because it is classified as experimental. In the procedure, bone marrow is extracted from the patient and replaced with bone marrow uncontaminated by cancerous cells.
Last week, a House of Delegates committee moved one step closer to tackling the problem when it unanimously endorsed a bill to require insurance companies to offer coverage for the transplant. A floor vote in the House this week and approval by the Senate are pending.
"I think that's the greatest thing they could ever do," Adams says. "When a doctor tells you you have breast cancer, you shouldn't have to worry about how you're going to pay or where that money is going to come from."
Until recently, insurers claimed there wasn't enough evidence that the treatment was effective to justify its cost.
But new evidence, coupled with staggering statistics on the incidence of breast cancer, has won them over.
"New information has come to light that has shown this is not experimental," says Robert Watters, a Richmond lobbyist representing the Task Force for Breast Cancer Insurance Reform. "And you can't ignore the fact that one out of eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer."
The Duke University Medical Center, which has conducted more than 700 transplants for breast cancer over the past decade, found that 72 percent of women with breast cancer lived at least five years cancer-free after the treatment, up from 30 percent, Watters quoted from figures compiled by a North Carolina task force.
Although companies offering group policies do not have to subscribe to the coverage for their employees, the mandate should eventually make the expensive therapies accessible to many women for about $5 a month, advocates say. Fewer than 300 are expected to need the treatment each year.
If approved as expected, the benefit will go into effect Jan. 1, 1995.
This is good news for women who cannot afford the treatment, which often costs more than $75,000.
But it won't come in time for Adams, who is scheduled to go to Duke later this month. She will either have a bone marrow transplant or advanced chemotherapy.
She has not received confirmation from her husband's insurance company that it will cover the procedures, so affording the treatment hinges on the generosity of her community.
In a ritual that has become as normal for breast cancer victims as chemotherapy treatments, churches, schools, businesses and neighbors across Franklin County are raising money through flea markets, spaghetti dinners and gospel music concerts.
So far, Adams has raised $7,000 in tax-deductible donations.
"Everybody's pitching in and trying to help," she says.
The outpouring of support has made her daily bout with cancer, the most grueling and frustrating part, more bearable.
Just getting to the doctor has been difficult. During the cold snap last month, Adams had to brave the icy, winding road near her house - the same road where her 17-year-old son lost control of his car on the ice and was killed in 1985 - because her blood count was low.
Her family shares the frustration she has grappled with for a year.
She can no longer serve as a volunteer at her daughter Shelley's elementary school.
Her sister, Sheree Lawrence, says Adams' illness has put the whole family's life on hold.
"You hear of it, and you read about it, and you see what other people go through," Lawrence says. "But until you walk that walk and talk that talk, you don't know what it's like."
by CNB