Sunday, April 9, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.
Sally de Lipkau is living proof that cancer can be beaten - more than once.
The Reno resident, who was a featured speaker as the Nevada Cancer Council unveiled its comprehensive cancer plan last week, has battled the disease and won five times.
In a group of speakers that included Gov. Kenny Guinn, de Lipkau captivated the audience as she spoke candidly about her two battles with breast cancer and subsequent bouts with leukemia, pancreatic cancer and cancerous tumors on her face.
After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she was given six months to live. But de Lipkau was determined to beat the disease and return to her job as a patient information representative at Washoe Medical Center.
The 63-year-old's survival, medical experts say, is a testament to the importance of early detection and action.
Researchers say she is a living example of the advances made in cancer diagnosis and treatment. As more people successfully battle the disease, some multiple times, the idea that a cancer diagnosis is an automatic death sentence has begun to fade.
"Terminal is for airports," said Dr. Nicholas J. Vogelzang, director of the Nevada Cancer Institute, located in Summerlin. "We don't use that word around here."
The concept began to change when the specialty of oncology was developed in the '70s, Vogelzang said. Since then the focus has shifted to identifying the different types of cancer and effective treatment methods for each.
Nevada, though, is getting a later start on cancer research than many other states.
The Nevada Cancer Council was formed in 2001 and the Nevada Cancer Institute opened in August of last year.
Karen Power, director of the Cancer Registry at the institute, explained the background and some of the hurdles faced in establishing the Nevada Cancer Plan.
"With regards to the plan, these programs are funded in increments and it is very competitive," Power said. "One year we missed an opportunity to get the plan in, but the next year we got it in and it was funded."
The logistics of Nevada's health care system, with key offices split among Carson City, Reno and Las Vegas, has hampered the program, she said.
"Many states have one central city where everything happens and you can get everything easily coordinated, but here we have the north and we have the south. Coordinating all the players in Nevada wasn't as easy as it might have been in some other states."
However, one advantage of getting started later, officials say, is that Nevada can capitalize on advancements elsewhere.
"The electronic medical records, for example, have made life much easier," Vogelzang said. "We can literally in a couple of hours tell you exactly what our population of patients is like in terms of age, demographics and other things. It's pretty remarkable."
One of the goals of the plan is to focus on cancer prevention through increased education. The plan outlines how everyone in the state, from health care professionals to employers to individuals, can identify risk factors and minimize them.
Other objectives include increased access to clinical trials and improved collaboration among cancer control efforts.
Toward that end, the Nevada Cancer Institute also unveiled the Nevada Collaborative Research Grants Program at last week's event.
The program will provide four grants of up to $50,000 for other state research facilities that enter into collaborative projects with the institute.
Guinn said this sort of joint effort is critical if the goals of the plan are to be achieved.
"Coordination between other research facilities and the Cancer Institute will be a very important part of this plan," Guinn said. "They are all connected to our health care services, and how we develop relationships between them will directly affect how successful our plan will be."
The plan will highlight the four types of cancer with the highest incidence rate: lung, breast, colo-rectal and prostate cancer. With more than 7,100 cases projected among them, the four are expected to account for about 60 percent of all new cancer cases in Nevada this year.
The plan also will place a special emphasis on health issues that have an added significance in Nevada. Vogelzang pointed out, for example, that the incidence rate of bladder cancer is higher in Nevada than in other states. That will be addressed.
"We are not sure why this is true," Vogelzang said. "That's one of the things we hope to find out."
Officials say people such as de Lipkau demonstrate not only the advances made medically in the state, but also the sense of commitment to developing a cancer treatment program with a national reputation.
De Lipkau was living in San Francisco during her first bout with breast cancer and was treated there, but all of her other illnesses have been treated in Nevada.
Her job with the Washoe Medical Center involves helping cancer patients gain access to financial resources, support groups and treatment options, and providing emotional support.
De Lipkau also has been an active volunteer with the American Cancer Society for more than 20 years. Now, at a time many people think about retirement, she has taken on an additional role as one of the people out front in the state-supported fight against cancer.
"I have done a lot of other things, but I never felt any of them were what I was supposed to be doing with my life," de Lipkau said. "From the beginning, this work has always felt right, and I plan to do it for as long as I can."
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