Dr. Priyanka Sharma, right, oncologist with Kansas University Cancer Center, speaks to metastatic breast cancer patient Lani Nelson, 72, of Prairie Village. Nelson was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer three years ago.

“Life goes on.”

Lani Nelson, 74, won’t surrender that mantra, despite her diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer.

“I’m part of life, it’s going on, I’m swept up in it — in a way I didn’t really choose, but I still am part of life — every bit of it,” Nelson said.

Once considered a devastating diagnosis, metastatic breast cancer is now being treated more as a chronic disease, according to Priyanka Sharma, an oncologist with the Kansas University Cancer Center.

Breast cancer becomes metastatic when it spreads beyond the breast tissue and lymph nodes — or metastasizes — to other areas of the body, such as the bones or brain, Sharma said.

Sharma said depending on the sub-type of the cancer, women are often living for three to five years, and every few years that number is growing. Nelson, a retired teacher living in Prairie Village, has lived with the disease for three years now.

“Patients with metastatic breast cancer are living longer because we have newer and better drugs that are not only better, but also better tolerated, that allow patients to stay on those drugs for longer periods of time,” Sharma said.

Most patients can continue with their normal day-to-day lives, she said, including going to work and taking care of their households and responsibilities. Many of the drugs used in treatment still have side effects that are hard to handle, but the medications to combat those side effects are improving, Sharma said.

Nelson said she stays active, working with a trainer and often going to lunch with friends, but she also spends a lot of time doing crossword puzzles and sudoku — particularly when she’s in “Cancer Land,” which is what she calls her various medical appointments and treatments.

“You kinda get caught up in (doing puzzles) because it’s mindless, and you’re not quite as frightened,” she said.

One point Sharma stressed is that every patient is different. One of the biggest hindrances to finding the right treatment for the disease, she said, is when patients or their loved ones read on the Internet about others’ bad experiences with a certain drug and develop a bias against it.

“Typically, the treatment is balanced against what effect it is having on quality of life,” Sharma said. “The goal is not to treat a scan — the goal is to treat a person, which means the person’s symptoms and the disease with it.”

Sharma is at the head of two clinical trials on metastatic breast cancer. Trials, she said, are the only way doctors continue to make progress in treatment, and most of her patients are open to participating if they know it will help others in the future.

“We find women are really open to the idea of participating in trials even if they know it might not help them directly, but if it’s going to help future generations and it’s going to help step up better therapy for the next person coming into the clinic,” she said.

Nelson said often things in “Cancer Land” seem grim, but when she comes home to her one dog, two cats and the various critters that frequent her 15 bird feeders, it “just brings (her) right back to real life.”

She wants other metastatic breast cancer patients to never feel as if they are alone.

“Please, please know that there’s a sisterhood out there, and a brotherhood for men,” she said.

Nelson is optimistic about how medical breakthroughs are changing the outlook of the diagnosis.

“We’re in it together, and we’re fighters,” she said, “(…) and maybe one day, conquerors.”

For an American woman, the chances of getting breast cancer are 1 in 8, Sharma said. For more information about Sharma’s clinical trials, visit kucancercenter.org.