Being told you have any form of cancer is scary to most people. When I was younger, just hearing you had cancer was like hearing you were just given a death sentence and for many types of cancer, it was true.

However, over the last half century, there have been many new developments in detecting, diagnosing and treating many forms of cancer and in many cases, it’s no longer the death sentence it used to be, depending on the type and stage of cancer when diagnosed.

The American Cancer Society estimates that about 1,735,350 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed this year in the United States. They also estimate that there will be about 609,640 deaths due to cancer this year in the US, meaning that it’s still scary.

Besides the fear of death, there is also the fear of having surgery and/or chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy, and we’ve all heard the horror stories about how sick so many people get after receiving treatment. Plus, there is also the fear of the financial cost and burden of being treated for cancer.

For many women, the words they fear the most is hearing that they have cervical, uterine, ovarian or breast cancer, as those attack the most personal parts of a woman. Many women feel that to lose any of these parts would make them less feminine, which is not true, but it’s that inner feeling that’s hard to shake.

This year, about 266,120 women will be told that they have invasive breast cancer and another 63,960 will be told they have non-invasive (carcinoma in situ) breast cancer – the earliest form of the disease. With all of the advances in treating breast cancer, it’s estimated about 40,920 women will die this year from breast cancer.

To put it in another perspective, about 12% of women in America (1 on 8) will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. While this may scare some ladies, realize that this also means that 7 in 8 will NOT develop breast cancer in their lifetime.

There has been a lot of new treatments for breast cancer, but one new innovation has just gained national attention after it saved the life a woman, Judy Perkins, with stage four breast cancer. Generally, stage four means you are terminal, but if this new treatment works, the number of women dying from breast cancer can be drastically reduced.

In 2003, Perkins had a mastectomy and had her lymph nodes removed. In 2013, she felt another lump on the same side and she went to the doctor, it was discovered she had stage four breast cancer. In 2015, the cancer had spread to her liver and chest. She said at that time, was certain she was going to die.

That’s when Perkins saw Dr. Steven Rosenberg, a pioneer in fighting cancer using the body’s own immune system to attack the cancer. How does he do it, or what did he do to save Judy Perkins?

He was able to identify the select immune cells that already sought out the genetic mutations that caused the cancer to grow and spread. He harvested some of them and then cultivated a large number of those select immune cells. He then injected them back into Perkins’ body and let them go after the cancer.

How fast do these immune cells work? Perkins said that only 10 days after Rosenberg injected the cultivated army of immune cells back into her body, she felt the tumor softening, realizing the treatment was working. Two and half years later, Perkins is cancer free.

Rosenberg commented:

“Circulating in her body are large numbers of cells we administered to her two and half years ago. This is just one treatment that’s necessary because the cells are alive. They’re part of Judy. They are Judy Perkins.”

This probably the most exciting news in the treatment of breast cancer in years. This type of immunotherapy is still in the experimental stage, but the results that Perkins had is exciting to many in the field, which should expedite the development of this new treatment, offering hope to tens of thousands of women.