Date:10/8/02
Ponds resident fights for cancer victims
by Richmond Talbot
Murphy has been in radio and television since she was 18. She started reporting and anchoring and now writes, produces and directs television programs. She lives in the Ponds of Plymouth and in her spare time teaches aerobics at Designing Women.
Her latest project is a documentary on breast cancer in young women, which will be aired on Lifetime Television on Thursday, Oct. 10, at 7 p.m. "I produced it, and I'm also the writer and director of it. The title is 'Fighting for our Future,' and I also wrote a companion book for it," she said. "It's about young women battling breast cancer, defining young women as 40 and under."
Murphy worked with a group in New York called "The Young Survival Coalition." She said, "I really started to understand their frustration in not being able to get information relating to them. Very often they'll go to their doctors with a lump in the breast and be told, 'Hey, don't worry about it; you're too young to get breast cancer.' "
The television program will be aimed at a broad audience, but the book, which is also titled Fighting for our Future, is more narrowly directed. "The book is geared toward the newly diagnosed, young survivors, their loved ones and their medical teams," she said.
According to Murphy, not enough is known about breast cancer in young women. She said, "Even if they're included in a study, their numbers are so small the data is statistically irrelevant because there's not enough of a pool."
While the numbers may be low compared with the whole population, they're far from insignificant. "There are 250,000 women under the age of 40 in the U.S. living with breast cancer and another 10,000 will be diagnosed this year," Murphy said. "Young women make up about 8 percent of the breast cancer community."
Young women have different issues when dealing with breast cancer than older women. Murphy said, "One of the most heart wrenching issues is losing their fertility from chemotherapy, which can often cause premature menopause."
There are treatment options that can take such issues into consideration, and Murphy wants to provide useful information, but she also feels that young women with breast cancer are a minority that is being ignored. She said, "My goal in doing this was to try to give a voice to the young women who really have had no voice in the breast cancer community. I feel very honored to have had the opportunity to be the vehicle. I see this as the beginning of something where young women can partner with their doctors. I'm going to give the young women the information they need to make the decisions that they have to make."
Empowerment has been a general theme in Murphy's work. "My mission is to give a voice to voiceless populations to really highlight issues that need attention that haven't been given the attention that they deserve," she said.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |