"Not being afraid of dying makes me feel very alive"
Elisenda Martínez has had cancer since she was 39 years old; now she is the president of the Spanish Association of Metastatic Breast Cancer
BarcelonaPutting on a swimsuit to go to the beach, taking a trip to the mountains… The summer plans we look forward to all year round are not equally easy for everyone. “These weeks the world stops in a kind of truce where most people disconnect, but we can't,” says Elisenda Martínez from Barcelona. It’s not easy to go to the beach after a mastectomy, to see your scars or to take photos without hair; it’s not easy to accept that the getaway you have planned will leave you “worn out” or that you’ll have to schedule your holidays around medical appointments and various treatments. “In the summer, cancer doesn’t go away,” laments Martínez, who, even though it’s harder now, doesn’t stop going to the festivals she used to attend before her diagnosis or enjoying the summer with friends and family.
For Elisenda Martínez, “the world fell on her” in 2021. She found a lump in her armpit. She was 39 years old and had just been promoted at work. Tests confirmed the most feared diagnosis: metastatic breast cancer (that is, breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body). “It’s the advanced version of breast cancer and today it’s incurable. With luck, we will live with treatment for the rest of our lives and we will never be able to disconnect from the hospital,” she states. " Fuck cancer," her t-shirt reads.
On this path of fears, pains, and particularly complicated summers, however, Elisenda Martínez has also found a support group of patients that has now become a group of friends. They call themselves the Heavy Metas. Thanks to them, she learned about the Spanish Association of Metastatic Breast Cancer, where she began volunteering and of which she is now president. “It fills me immensely to help other women, to learn every day, to work to raise funds for research with initiatives like the Chiara Giorgetti award and to give visibility to our illness and our demands, such as speeding up the process of bringing medicines to market. I’m doing my bit to make this world a little better, and no job has ever given me that before! It’s brutal,” she explains passionately.
She says she does it “for those who are still on the path, for those who have just started it, for those who are no longer here and for those who unfortunately will come.” And it is “tiring,” she admits, especially with the medication they carry. But having lost friends gives her even more strength: “There comes a point where you are not afraid of dying, but of not living; and that makes me feel very alive.”
Always drawing strength when it seems there is no more left, Martínez recalls that this summer has also brought good news to Catalan patients with metastatic breast cancer. Two new drugs have arrived at Social Security – “although it is not enough, now they must reach all hospitals and research must continue to be fostered even more” – and the Spanish Association of Metastatic Breast Cancer, which she presides over, has launched the free assistant Olivia. It is an “empathetic” AI designed to accompany people with metastatic breast cancer. Naturally, after a diagnosis, the “thirst for knowledge and need for information” leads many patients to turn to Google, with the inaccuracies and anxieties this entails. This AI, on the other hand, responds with scientifically validated data. “It does not replace a medical team in any way, but it can help you better understand certain things when you are still afraid or to formulate questions at your appointment,” she exemplifies.
“What advice would you give to a patient with metastatic breast cancer this summer?” we ask the assistant Olivia. The AI responds based on four rigorously referenced scientific articles. Among other things, it recommends applying “sunscreen rigorously, as many treatments affect the skin”; hydrating “constantly”, opting for “fresh and light” food; listening to your body when exercising and resting, which is also “part of your care.”
Elisenda answers the same question, and the response becomes, of course, human: “Be kinder to yourself and always, always, ask for help.”