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In Norfolk, Joan Lunden talks about breast cancer

Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) - 4/27/2015

April 27--NORFOLK -- When Joan Lunden was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, she considered not making the information public.

As if that would work, she joked backstage before speaking Sunday as part of the Jewish Family Service of Tidewater's Spring into Healthy Living program. But it wasn't the inevitable leak of information that prompted her to become an advocate for awareness and screening. It was her father's work, cut short when he was killed in a plane crash in 1964. Erle Blunden was an oncologist.

"I had an opportunity to fulfill his legacy," Lunden told the crowded Samuel C. Johnson Theater at Norfolk Academy.

As a reporter, Lunden met Dr. Susan Love, a breast cancer author and patient advocate. Off-camera, Love and Lunden talked about getting regular mammograms and Lunden said she was always getting called back into the office because they couldn't see anything since she had dense breast tissue. Love replied: You know, you should get an ultrasound.

"Thank God I did," Lunden told the crowd.

It was then that she learned she had a fast-growing cancer in her right breast.

That interview with Love was sheer luck, she said, and now it's her turn to pass on what she's learned.

Lunden's memoir, "Had I Known," is due out in September, but she's finding her story is already widely circulated.

Lunden, who has finished treatment, said she frequently hears from other women who are stunned to learn that a clean mammogram doesn't necessarily mean they are cancer-free.

And Lunden's co-author, Laura Morton, spotted a sign at her doctor's office when she was getting a mammogram that talked about breast density. So, she asked about it and said she wanted an ultrasound. The response? "Yeah, you and every other woman since Joan Lunden was on the cover of People magazine."

The audience in Norfolk erupted in applause.

"It is my honor to be an advocate in the breast cancer fight," she said.

Lunden, who is cancer-free, ended by saying that if her father is looking down on her, he's saying, "You pick up that ball, baby doll, and you run into that end zone."

Lauren King, 757-446-2309, lauren.king@pilotonline.com

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