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When celebrities with medical issues get pharmaceutical endorsements I almost always mention that I have mixed feelings. Its refreshing in that it comes across like a genuine partnership. It also feels like a company is using a popular face and a compelling story to sell a product (at a high price) for people in medical crisis. The FDA vets medication thoroughly and its a difficult, expensive process to get a drug approved. However companies also make small changes to drugs once theres competition just to get a new patent and charge more.
Thats all preface to this story about actress Cobie Smulders, now 36 with two children, recounting her ovarian cancer experience at just 25. She was worried that her fertility would be affected, that she wouldnt be able to have kids, and she also was frustrated at the lack of information online. This isnt the first time Cobie has talked about this, she told Womens Health about it in 2015. Cobie has been married to Taran Killam of SNL since 2012 and they have daughters Shaelyn, 9, and Joelle, 3. Shes now partnering with a company called Tesaro which has a maintenance drug for ovarian cancer called Zejula. Its priced at upwards of $10,000 a MONTH. Medicare does cover it, although I read one complaint that it costs $3,500 a month with medicare until you meet the deductible. After that its $755 a month. Still not affordable for most. (An insider in the pharmaceutical insider told me the high cost may be due to the small population being treated along with the duration of intended treatment.) Heres what she told People:
When Cobie Smulders was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she was just 25 years old and without a road map on how to get through it.
?It was a mess,? she tells PEOPLE. ?I think it was messy mostly because I had a great fear of not being able to have kids. I?ve always been very maternal, I?ve always loved children and I?ve always wanted one of my own, and so having that not being option, especially at such a young age ? kids were very much not on my mind at 25, but I still wanted them one day ? it was really hard and it was a really depressing thing to go through.?
?I remember doing mad, crazy Google searches on my disease and trying to understand it better, and obviously I was talking to my doctors, but there wasn?t at the time and it was very bleak,? she says.
Smulders went into control mode, and tried everything under the sun to get her body back to health, from cutting out cheese and carbohydrates to yoga classes, acupuncture, crystal healers and more.
Thankfully, her surgeon was able to save enough of her ovaries ? just one-third ? for her to have two kids (?it was very small but mighty, apparently,? she says) and she has been in remission for nearly a decade.
Smulders resisted talking about her cancer for years, until she revealed her battle in a 2015 issue of Women?s Health.
?For me at the time, I just wanted to deal with it on my own and with my family,? she says now. ?I wasn?t interested in sharing it with anybody. It doesn?t really benefit the world until now, when I can say, ?this is what I went through and I survived it. These are the things I did and these are the things I learned and these are the things I can show you.? Before it just felt like something I want to deal with myself.?
?There?s a statistic that 85 percent of women who had advanced ovarian cancer had a recurrence, and when you?re faced against those odds it?s a very terrifying place to be in,? she says. ?I think for those women, it?s a great opportunity to have treatment options that weren?t available to me when I was going through my own cancer. It?s kind of a new day of more options and more awareness, and a place and a time where you can get more answers.?
[From People]
If I had ovarian cancer I would want to be on a drug that had been clinically shown to quadruple the time before recurrence. (If Im reading the wiki page for it accurately.) However Im appalled at the cost, which seems so prohibitively high. The healthcare system in the US is just so broken and expensive that so many of us face the scary decision of getting treatment or going bankrupt. That issue looms for so many of us no matter how healthy we are now. A medical crisis for us or a family member could easily cost us our livelihoods.
As for Cobie I understand why shes working with this company and I dont think thats necessarily bad. Medicine is a for-profit business and its big business. Even for something we consider so personal.
Also I just learned shes Canadian. Lucky bitch.
View this post on Instagram
Happy Canada Day!! Oh Canada my home and native landI?m so happy to have your name on my passport.#canadaday
A post shared by Cobie Smulders (@cobiesmulders) on Jul 1, 2018 at 3:24pm PDT
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