Rebekah Gibbs’ Death Shows Just How Deadly Breast Cancer Can Be In Young Women
Rebekah Gibbs and Gigi
Actress Rebekah Gibbs has died today aged 41, six years after a diagnosis of breast cancer. Gibbs played paramedic Nina Farr for more than 100 episodes of the BBC medical drama, Casualty, between 2004 and 2006.
Rebekah first discovered a lump in her breast in 2008 when she was pregnant with her daughter, Gigi. Doctors were reassuring and said it would be benign. But just months after having baby and after pushing for further treatment because she felt something was wrong, the actress was told she had a particularly aggressive cancer.
The actress was given the five year “all clear” in April 2013, but spoke about not taking her health for granted: “I won’t get cocky though and I take each day as it comes. I am always a little unsure about the future,” she said. Sadly last August she had a seizure while on holiday and was diagnosed with two brain tumours.
Breast cancer in young women is a devastating and complex disease. Last week I attended the European School of Oncology 2nd Breast Cancer in Young Women Conference with discussions on how the etiology of breast cancer in younger women is poorly understood (click here for summary of conference tweets). Most clinical trials focus on women who are over the age of 40, thus little evidence-based data is available about the optimal management of younger women. Further research is much needed in this field. As Katherine O’Brien of the Metastatic Breast Cancer Network has written, deaths of young women like Rebekah are a wake up call for all of us.
Thank you for this thoughtful post! I’m going to use ScoopIt to share it and also Twitter.
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Thank you for sharing these thoughts. The specific aggressiveness of breast cancer in women below 40 was the subject of a presentation by German oncologist Sybille Loibl at the ESMO conference in Madrid last September. She performs research in this field.
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I am joining every trial I am offered. Many studies had my blood. Diagnosed at 30 and mets at 34 (BRCA1 &BRCA2 negative) I am hoping my information helps solve some of the unknown someday. Until then I hope to help them study it. I am at least happy with how many studies are asking for access to study my cancer over the years, hopefully that will mean progress is coming.
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Not only is more research needed, but it sure would be nice if the accompanying material was more comprehensive for young BC patients as well. I was barely on the cusp of being “young” when I was diagnosed (three weeks shy of my 41st birthday) but will always remember the feeling of flipping through the booklet my breast surgeon gave me on dealing with BC. Every picture showed a grey-haired, grandmotherly looking woman, and there was not one thing to which I related. I was scanning the text for details on how to tell my elementary-school-aged kids, or how to comprehend the idea of (hopefully) living another 40 years or so with this disease. Nothing in that booklet touched on BC and the “young” woman. It still makes me sad to think of that.
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