She met a very good man, they bought a nice home and started a family. I then bought a house just a block away from her so that we could still be close. After her third child she developed breast cancer. I arranged to work a night shift so that I could take her for treatments and care for her during the day. They did a radical mastectomy on her left breast, but the cancer continued to spread.
Many breast cancers are hormone dependent very similar to prostate cancer.
The pituitary gland is the master gland of the body that controls the production of all of the hormones in the body. Today we have agonists like Lupron and Flutamide that can prevent the production of certain hormones. But in those days they didn't have the LHRH agonists that we have today. Joanie agreed to participate in a trial using the large cyclotron at UC Berkeley to destroy her pituitary. They made a mask for her and strapped it on her head.