Joan Lunden

Didn't know what hemoglobin was??? This is why I don't pay attention to the "celebrity bc publicity machine" - your PCPs and oncs are there for a reason - to answer your questions!!! Scary too that someone didn't take biology in high school or ever have a blood test, or give birth or.....

Hope you don't mind my posting in triple neg thread. I wondered if anyone on the boards here saw Joan yesterday again with Matt Lauer, so I did a search and this thread came up. So if anyone's still getting updates on this thread, I'd be interested in your thoughts.

I confess to a mild obsession with celebs who are diagnosed with bc. To me, a lot of the reporting on it is quite superficial. In reading this entire thread, I'm flabbergasted to learn the Today show wanted that certain bald headed cancer survivor look from the people in the plaza. It ticks me off.

Now about Joan. First, I didn't think she looked all that great. Secondly, she is now saying she's getting ready for radiation, so apparently her treatment has changed for whatever reasons. I didn't know until yesterday that she'd been dx with triple neg, so I appreciate that we know that much because often the celebs don't share that info, the media often just puts out there so-and-so has "bc" likes its all one and the same.

Joan made it sound like rads would be a walk in the park. I had 33 rounds of rads and it was a different kind of difficult from chemo. I was much more emotional, crying several times when I hadn't ever cried while on chemo. And so much exhaustion.

The other thing I wonder about is Joan's appearance on NBC when she worked all those years for ABC. Is it because ABC has Robin Robert and the other woman, Amy, can't think of her last name, who are the face of bc and Joan would add one too many to their list of bc stories?

I just looked at the tape and read the blurb on Today's site and noticed two things - she signed on with NBC to be a "special correspondent" last October during BC awareness month - don't know if they are paying her, and she is also writing a book (of course!) so she will make the rounds of talk shows promoting it.  She started radiation at the beginning of the month, so she is about half way in.

I saw the interview on Today and she did not look as well as when she did the segments in October, but then she's been through, most likely, the AC since then.  I say this, because initially, she was quoted as saying, she'd had one chemo (presumably Taxol) and she was hoping to avoid the "red devil."  It was awhile after her diagnosis before the triple neg status was revealed, but I'm grateful it was!  So rarely do celebrities with breast cancer actually say what kind they have.  I liked her optimistic outlook in the interview this week as well - not all doom and gloom - as you can sometimes get with less informed newscasters talking about TN. 

I had wondered what type of bc Robin Roberts had & I had to carefully scan her book to find a small reference to her TN status.  As far as I could tell, she never used the words TN when describing her cancer. The more the public is aware of TN, the better recognition it will obviously get.  I thought I knew a lot about bc prior to my diagnosis, but I had never heard of triple negative prior to being diagnosed with it myself.  And almost NO ONE I tell about my cancer as ever heard of it.  The book is a good thing on that one point alone - educating others about TN.

I think a terrific woman in the media who has done an exceptional job in candidly expressing her breast cancer journey is Fox News' Jennifer Griffin. Here is an article about her TNBC experience. If you google her name, she also has a website devoted to her experience as well.

http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/jennifer-gri...

Hope you don't mind me posting here but I found an October 2008 article on people.com where Robin Roberts said she had triple negative.

Yes, but RR then had a bone marrow transplant that was successful I think over a year ago and is now "cured" at least that is my understanding.