S AN EMERGENCY MEDICINE PHYSICIAN
since the mid-1990s, I’ve cared for all sorts
of patients: old and young, rich and poor,
male and female. I’ve also observed the
companions who arrive with the patients,
as they scramble to handle this health
crisis amid work, family, and financial
obligations. Often that burden lands
chiefly on women, doing double, triple,
quadruple duty to care for children, part-
ners, parents, and other loved ones. It’s a
global phenomenon: The Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development
says the world’s women spend more than 1.1 trillion hours a
year on unpaid care of children and the elderly. Men spend
about a third as much.
As an executive producer on the television drama Grey’s
Anatomy, I write these women into scripts. They are mothers,
partners, wives, sisters, daughters, CEOs, and secretaries. The
woman who just had a baby, thinks she has a blocked milk duct,
and finds out too late that it’s breast cancer.^1 The woman who
doesn’t want to admit to being raped because she thinks she’ll
be blamed for being where she was or wearing what she wore.
They’re women who have a terminal illness, or need an
organ transplant—and have to break it to their daughters.
Women confronting their sexuality head-on; getting pregnant
at older ages and choosing alternate paths to motherhood, or
being childless by choice. Women with brain tumors, men-
tal illness, and depression; women with no insurance, and
women who could buy the world.
I write these women because I see these women. Because
I am these women. I am firmly stuck in the “sandwich gen-
eration,” taking care of an aging mother and three young
children. Working full-time. Juggling schools, schedules,
extracurricular activities, babysitters, deadlines, caregivers,
and professional goals, all while trying to have a semblance
of a social life. I am a physician, I am a writer, I am a mother,
I am a single woman. I am everywoman, we are multitudes—
and we are frequently, quietly, overwhelmed.
If this is the script of so many women’s lives, how do we
find the means to nurture health and wellness?
There’s plenty to fault in the medical care, treatment,
research, and support that are available to the female half
of humanity. But there also are reasons for optimism, in dis-
coveries and advances that show real promise for girls and
women. I’m especially hopeful when I see us do the single
best thing we can do to promote well-being: Speak up!
More women need to open their mouths and talk. About
their miscarriages or their infertility or their contraception
scares. About their cancer or their heart disease. About
depression. Anxiety. Weight. Eating disorders. Alcohol
abuse. Prescription drug abuse. Domestic violence. The
stigma attached to such conditions keeps many of us silent.- BREAST CANCER
Cancer cell
conversion
Sometimes breast cancer
cells avoid medical treatments
by drifting away from tightly
packed tumors and changing
their internal machinery.
They then resemble adult
stem cells and can travel
in the body and start new
tumors elsewhere. By using
existing drugs that target
these tumor turned stem cells
in mice, a team of biomedical
researchers re directed their
development so they became
harmless fat cells. The treat-
ment has shown the potential
“to repress tumor invasion
and malignant progression,”
as scientists from the Uni-
versity of Basel, Switzerland,
reported in the journal Cancer
Cell. —THERESA MACHEMER
Women
A Century of
Change
A YEARLONG
SERIES78 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC