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Maggie Daley
New treatments help fight breast cancer

About a year after Shirley Mertz's breast cancer had spread throughout her spine and into her liver, she was awaiting a scan to gauge how her treatment was working. When told it showed no evidence of disease, she recalls being flabbergasted - as was her doctor. As she got the good news almost five years ago, Mertz couldn't help but reflect on how people usually think metastatic breast cancer is an automatic death sentence. She now advocates for women to ask questions and seek second opinions after a scary diagnosis. Women with breast cancer often live in fear of it metastasizing - spreading beyond the breast to distant sites in the body such as the bones or the liver. That...