HOWELL – The members of the Howell Township Council have issued a proclamation to raise awareness of Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) in memory of Monica Zealand Hill.
Hill, 35, of Maplewood, grew up in Howell and died on April 16 from MBC. She raised $350,000 in less than two years while she fought the disease. Hill was a graduate of Freehold Township High School. She is survived by her husband, Aaron Hill, and their daughter, Olivia.
Council members said they wanted to bring attention to MBC awareness in Howell and support the efforts of METAvivor.
METAvivor is dedicated to the specific fight of women and men living with stage 4 MBC. At the time of METAvivor’s founding, no organization was dedicated to funding research for the disease and no patient groups were speaking out about the dearth of stage 4 cancer research. METAvivor remains the sole United States organization dedicated to awarding annual stage 4 breast cancer research funds.
“Breast cancer has no parameters for age or sex, so males and females are equally subject to this horrible disease. Early detection definitely saves lives,” Deputy Mayor Evelyn O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell is a two-time breast cancer survivor and said, “I am eternally grateful for the medicine that does exist.”
Tami Bowling is living with MBC and is the co-founder of METAvivors of New Jersey. Bowling was a friend and board member with Hill. She said nobody wants to imagine a situation such as Hill’s.
“Monica worked for Johnson and Johnson, she had a great career in the pharmaceutical industry, she worked there for 10 years. Then all of a sudden at 33, she felt a lump and went to the doctor … Not only was it breast cancer, it was stage 4 breast cancer just out of the blue,” Bowling said.
As someone who lives with MBC, Bowling said it is cathartic to feel like she can bring light or bring meaning to the situation.
“Metastatic means it left the primary organ and spread elsewhere in the body. MBC is when the breast cancer travels through your lymph nodes to primarily your bones, lungs, liver and brain.
“Once a cancer has spread outside the primary organ, that is what makes it stage 4 and incurable. You can hope for better treatments and pray that science will come up with ways to make it a chronic illness instead of a deadly one, but Monica ran out of treatment options because the average life expectancy once diagnosed is 24 to 36 months,” Bowling said.
Bowling said that at the present time, only 5% of research funding in the United States is allocated toward metastatic research.
“So 95% of research dollars are going into prevention and early detection, but even 30% of those early detected is going to come back as stage 4. The metastatic community feels really strongly that at least 30% of U.S. research should be going to treatment for the already metastasized,” Bowling said.
For more information, visit metavivor.org