Thriving Together 2026: LBBC's MBC Conference Through Our Eyes

Every year, Living Beyond Breast Cancer (LBBC) brings together hundreds of people living with metastatic breast cancer for one of the most anticipated events in the MBC community, the Thriving Together MBC Conference. This year marked a milestone: the 20th anniversary.

In this episode, the members of the podcast team Abigail Johnston, Dr. Jill Tirabassi, Dr. Ellen Landsberger, and Victoria Goldberg, all MBC patients themselves, sit down for an honest, heartfelt recap of the 2026 conference. They share what moved them, what they learned, and what keeps them coming back year after year.

Topics covered include:

• The emotional experience of walking into a room full of people living with MBC — for the first time and the tenth
• Highlights from the scientific sessions, including insights from Dr. Virginia Borges and Dr. Seth Wander on personalized medicine, ctDNA, and the explosion of new treatment options
• The power of patient-centered programming and why Thriving Together hits differently than ASCO or SABCS
• Favorite sessions: expressive writing, reading scans and research, and the Spinning Science workshop
• The growing presence of caregivers and families at the conference
• Suggestions for future programming, including tracks for long-term survivors and pre-conference prep for the newly diagnosed
• A look at LBBC's Hear My Voice advocacy program, Project Life, and what the next 20 years might bring

Whether you've been to Thriving Together ten times or have never heard of it, this episode will make you want to be in that room.

Resources mentioned:

• Living Beyond Breast Cancer
• Project Life
• Spinning Science (via Project Life)
• Hear My Voice Advocacy Program (LBBC)

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe and leave a review — it really helps. Follow us on social media @livefromstage4 and visit our website at www.livefromstage4.org for show notes and links.

 Your support helps us continue to share important stories and advocate for those living with metastatic breast cancer.

Until next time, take care and keep pushing for progress.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Could a cure for cancer be closer than you think? Welcome to Life from Stage 4, where MBC takes center stage as we talk to experts, share inspiring stories, break down signs, and shine the spotlight on what matters most. Because when it comes down to it, the spot for us and by us is all about us. For 20 years, Living Beyond Breast Cancer has been bringing together women living with metastatic breast cancer for one of the most anticipated events in the MBC community, the Thriving Together Conference. This landmark annual event brings patients, caregivers, and advocates together to learn about the latest research, share their experiences, and find community with others who truly understand the reality of living with metastatic breast cancer. This year marked the twentieth anniversary of Thriving Together, and we couldn't let it pass without talking about it. In this episode, the podcast team, all of us NBC patients ourselves, sit down to share our experiences from this year's conference. What moved us, what we learned, and what keeps us coming back. Welcome to Thriving Together 2026, LBBC's NBC Conference through our eyes. And it's their 20th anniversary. And we thought that it would be a good idea to just do a little post-mortem, or maybe that's the wrong choice of words, to do a little recap of the conference. What did you think of the conference? And before you answer, just tell us your name and how many LBBC conferences you've attended before that. Why don't I start with me? Why not? So I'm Victoria Goldberg, and this was my, I think, 10th conference. Without counting the COVID years, this was probably my 10th conference. And now I'll pass it on to Jill. Hi, this is Jill. This was my second conference.

SPEAKER_04 2:47

Abigail? So my first conference was 2019 when I participated in the Hear My Voice program. And then I was part of the planning committee that made the adjustments for COVID and going online. It's been really interesting, the different experiences over the years. I think this was my eighth counting the COVID years when we were online.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

And I'm Ellen, and this was actually my first conference. Such a variety of experiences. I know.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

I think this is good. What do we think about this conference? What are your main takeaways?

SPEAKER_04 3:24

So the LBBC MBC conference for me has never been about the science because I've gone to San Antonio for just about the same number of years that I've gone to the LBBC conference. And once you attend the sessions that are for the doctors, sessions for the patients just don't land in the same way anymore.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

I'm going to interrupt for a second. We'll be throwing around a lot of conference names, and I want to make sure everyone knows what we're talking about here. Here's a quick guide. The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, or SABCS, is one of the world's premier breast cancer research conferences, held annually in December and attended primarily by oncologists and researchers. ASCO, the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, is similarly a large scientific conference geared toward medical professionals. Neither is designed with patients as the primary audience. The LBBC Thriving Together Conference, by contrast, is built from the ground up for embassy patients within from a patient advisory committee, and in recent years, in partnership with Project Life, an embassy patient advocacy organization, the patient first design is exactly what makes Thriving Together different. Okay. Now back to what Abigail was saying. Because this is exactly the point.

SPEAKER_04 4:58

The reason I go to the LBBC MBC conference every year is for the other MBC people. And I was heartened to see that while it's still largely newly diagnosed people, right? About 60% in their first year of diagnosis, there was a pretty good critical mass of those of us who have been living a little bit longer with MBC this year. And it always feels a little bit like an interesting family reunion where you get to see people that you don't ever get to see in person. I had at least a dozen people come up to me who are friends with me on Facebook. So got to meet them in person for the first time. So that's always fun. So for me, it's the people that brings me back to these conferences. And I thought this year was especially special just because of the people that I got to see, including all three of you.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I came in from New York, I took the train to Philadelphia for just one day because I really went to see the people who I knew. And it started when I checked in. I took a very early train. I was pretty tired. And I'm checking in, and all of a sudden, like these people going, Hi Ellen, hi Ellen. And there were people who I had only known on Facebook. And Jill and I had never met before in person. And there were people who I was really seeking out, and I did, but there were people I had no clue that who were going to be there. And a woman who I had seen on Facebook and on other Zooms just said hi to me. And I didn't recognize her face, but the voice was very clear. It was very moving to see so many people who I did feel very close to.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

How about you, Jill? I know that this was your second, and the first and the second were very different, right? The experience was quite a bit different.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Exactly, Victoria. The same experience as me showing up without a ticket, because last year I did that, and then this year I knew it knowingly went in without a ticket and was hoping to walk in. So thank you for letting me in. Yeah, last year was my first time, and it was my first foray into any breast cancer conference. And given that it was based in living with MBC, it was a hard experience for me to just see that many people. To me, it felt like that many young women that were sharing this terrible experience together with me. And so I actually had to take a lot of breaks. I skipped a lot of sessions last year because I mentally emotionally I wasn't quite ready to handle all that. So coming in this year, a little more steady, which is wonderful to meet a lot of you know people on this podcast who I hadn't met in person before, to meet some other few people and people I hadn't seen since last year's conference. And I I think for myself and Ellen, I'll throw you in here too. As physicians speaking from the scientific part, I really thought it was acceptable to all comers, and I really appreciated the efforts made to do that. I think at the end where Dr. Borges was like, here's the list of things to ask your oncologist. I love that. I thought someone would go up to take pictures of it. But I also think the messaging was really appropriate. And then at the end of her talk, she also talked about how she doesn't really have, you know, a life expectancy limit. And I thought that was really powerful and helpful messaging, especially for a lot of the newly diagnosed there. There's just so many new drugs in the last three to five years and so many more coming out. It obviously gives me hope from a selfish point of view, but I think the greater mass of people there, it was great. And so I came away feeling much better about things and being more centered at this conference this year.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

I'll say a couple of words. And this was my probably 10th conference, but only the second time I came to this conference as a patient. In the past, even though I was a patient, I used to work the booth the whole time. So I hardly ever got a chance to see the conference or go to any of the presentations or any of the sessions. So it's very hard to comment on that. But I have to say that what I've always liked about this conference, it always gave you a very positive outlook, even though there is a lot of sadness and there is a lot of hard stuff, and people who are not doing as well as you would hope they'd be doing. But still, the takeaway message always, in my opinion, is hope. But I also think that it's a little overwhelming for the newly diagnosed. And I'm glad they have a forum like this where they can come and meet people, but still, it's overwhelming. And this year, it was clearly much better attended than in the years of the past. I don't know what needs to be done to make the newly diagnosed less overwhelmed, but that's a separate question.

SPEAKER_04 9:50

So, this is a conference where more than 50% every year, sometimes as high as 70 something percent in the years past, are those people in the first year of diagnosis. And everybody's so overwhelmed in that first year. And in fact, at my first conference, I met somebody who had been, it was like eight weeks beforehand. She got diagnosed, and then she was at that conference within eight weeks, which I would not have been able to handle that eight weeks afterwards. I don't know, yeah. She, Amy Parliament is also part of the podcast team, and then she's who I'm talking about. So being already connected to various organizations because of her early stage diagnosis, she did have the awareness of the conference different than I certainly did.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

I think that the conference is overwhelming. You walk in and you see so many people, everybody's got a smiley face on, I think they're all living with MVC. And I've been living with this for nine years, and I walked in and I started crying. And it was mixed because I was happy to see so many people. And I mean, I was happy to see the people who I knew. And I too was very struck by all the young people, and that's been very distressing. I'm one of the older people in the space in the community, and it's really distressing to me to see so many young women. And I don't think there's any way to get over it being overwhelming. I was overwhelmed at my first San Antonio conference, and it's a lot to take in. And I think I still refer to taking breaks and things like that. We've just learned to pace ourselves, and that's part of living with NBC is learning to pace yourself. You can't do everything you want to do, you can't do everything you used to do, and you come up with a new way. And this conference actually exemplifies that because it's a combination of the science and learning and the new drugs, and we all want to learn that and how to make the diagnosis and how to figure this out and how to get ahead of things. But then how do you live with it? And that's something that this conference brings to the community that the major scientific conferences just don't. They don't try to and they can't.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

I I just wanted to second what Ellen said, that my memory of the first time coming to the conference, I remember it so well, the Friday night get to know you dinner. I did not know what to expect. I walk into this huge ballroom with many tables full of people living with metastatic breast cancer. And I thought that it would be heartwarming for me, but I broke down. I really cried, but the scene of so many people, and I was a lot younger then, seeing so many people living with this disease was truly difficult.

SPEAKER_04 12:45

This is Abigail. I did enjoy the presentations by patients more than even some of the science because exactly what Ellen was saying, those were more about coping and living with. And certainly the science is important for as we make treatment decisions and deal with the side effects and adverse events and all of that from treatment. But the input that I appreciate the most at any conference, uh honestly, is the patient perspective of the application of the science, how people are navigating decision making. And even though I was involved in some of the sessions that I'm talking about personally presenting. So I'm not necessarily just tuning my own horn here. It's more just the learning from each other about the lived experience to me is what I get the most of out of these conferences. And this is also the first year that my mom attended with me. And I saw a significant increase this year in the number of caregivers, even whole families that were there, where they brought their kids too. And to me, that's also really important that LBBC uh encourages caregivers to come as well. Because as much as we complain to a certain extent about the lack of support that we often receive or the amount of how overwhelming it is, I think the people in our lives who aren't living the disease but watch us struggle with the disease, seeing that they had separate sessions all about how to take care of themselves as they're taking care of somebody with MBC, I thought was also really important. And I was glad to see that many people there.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Abigail, did your mother attend one of those breakout sessions?

SPEAKER_04 14:31

She popped into a couple of them, but I think she was more concerned that I had Timo the day before I flew back.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

She wanted to be a true chaperone.

SPEAKER_04 14:40

She was keeping an eye on me, making sure I wasn't having a hard time, probably more than anything else. But she connected with and got to meet quite a few of the other caregivers, and that was really important for her as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

I love seeing your mother. It was the second time I met her. And there's another friend of mine who was there, Ashley Fernandez. And Ashley's mother, I've met Ashley's mother several times when they've come to New York. So to see you and Ashley was a great treat. But then to see your mothers and to be with them is also really amazing and really wonderful. And the community just gets bigger and bigger.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

True. I'm grateful to LBBC for doing this for 20 years because in the past, as we know, Coleman did some patient-focused conferences and they were wonderful. But then during COVID, they stopped. And so now it seems that LBBC is the only one remaining.

SPEAKER_04 15:36

What makes LBBC unique too is that they always have a committee of patients who are providing input on the planning. And this year as well as last year, Project Life has come alongside LBBC as an MBC partner organization to also provide input and provide the patient perspective. And so I really do think that yes, there may be other conferences that might purport to focus on the MBC experience, but it's just a whole lot more powerful when patients are part of the planning and can provide the input as to what is the most important for us. So I think there's always a need to balance what people at the very beginning need versus what those of us who have been living longer need. And so one thing that I think could perhaps improve on keeping those of us who are living longer term coming back, not just for the people, but also for the programming, is to potentially have different tracks so that there's some of that information that's so necessary at the beginning, but then also information that might be helpful as once we get past our fifth, sixth line of treatment, we're off the map. And so we need a little different, you know, information, especially as we're making treatment decisions.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

I also had up some thoughts about perhaps like a session and they could be all at the same time because it can go to whatever, but maybe based on like the predominance of where your metastatic disease is, like whether it's like a liver session or a bone session or a brain session, just because I think if we're talking about medication or even locally derived therapies, that could be something a little helpful for some people that had topics in my brain as well.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Yeah, I could see that being helpful. The very first conference I ever went to was a Coleman conference for people with NBC. I actually met Victoria there. And that's how they did it. They had some general discussions first, and then they broke it down. There were sessions by location. And that's very interesting. So there are several different approaches. It's still good. As much as we want tracks that we can get what our needs are, I think it's really important to have everybody together as well, because people learn from each other. It's very reassuring for people to see those of us who've lived for a long time with the disease. And certainly the elements of things like the project life and the living with MBC aspect to it. Everybody has something to offer for that. And so I think that's really helpful. And I've adopted over time a couple of newbies, like people who just want to figure out how to get into advocacy or how to live with MBC, but make it work for you too, and the value. So there's so many aspects to this. And I think one conference can't provide everything for everybody. It's just too much to expect. The uniqueness of this conference is the patient-centered focus. And as long as that's maintained, the other stuff just makes it better.

SPEAKER_04 18:47

Yeah. And the conference has always been somewhat connected to the advocacy program that LBBC runs, the Hear My Voice program. My class in 2019 was the last class where it was all in person. And the subsequent classes have all had a component of in-person, but mostly virtual. And so that's another thing that they highlighted this year was a variety of people who had participated in the Hear My Voice program and what they've gone on to do in advocacy, which was a bittersweet slideshow because so many of the people they highlighted are no longer with us. But also just highlights how LBBC, because of their commitment to the metastatic community, has launched quite a few people into advocacy or provided them that baseline foundation advocacy training. And just another kind of element of the conference.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Let's take a pause here to explain three programs that keep coming up in our conversation. Hear My Voice is LBBC's flagship patient advocacy training program. It equips people living with metastatic breast cancer with the skills, confidence, and connections to become effective advocates at the research, policy, and community level. Abigail went through the program in 2019 as part of the last all-in-person class. Project Life is an MBC patient-led advocacy organization that has partnered with LBBC in recent years to bring the patient voice directly into the planning of the Thriving Together Conference. Their involvement ensures that what's on stage actually reflects what the MBC community needs to hear. And Spinning Science is a patient education program created by Amy Beimer, who holds a PhD in microbiology. It teaches MBC patients how to read, interpret, and use scientific research so that you can walk into your oncologist's office and actually understand what the studies say. The program runs across five online sessions covering breast cancer subtypes, genomic testing, clinical trials, CT DNA, and how to read scientific research. It was developed through Project LIFE and continues to evolve based on participant feedback with new cohorts being planned. The program now lives on a virtual platform with office hours making it more accessible than ever. And the results speak for themselves. A study of 54 MPC patients who completed the program found that before spinning science, 43% said that they didn't feel they knew enough to make their own medical decisions. After completing the program, that number dropped to just 13%. A statistically significant improvement in confidence and self-efficacy. Okay, now back to the conversation. What was your favorite session that you attended?

SPEAKER_04 21:53

My favorite session was the writing session on Sunday morning, and the title of it was Tending to Your Inner world, how expressive writing can be a really important way to process emotions, process the experience. And April Stearns from Wildfire was the moderator of that particular session. And there is science that your brain actually changes as you do this expressive writing. And so in the session, she talked about that there was a writing prompt. And we could not get people to focus because they were so into writing and then sharing their writing with each other. That was my favorite session, not just because I was on the panel talking about writing, but it was also just a really great something to participate in. And so I think drawing on my educational background, I do have a master's in education. So I'm always looking at how these conferences go in terms of what people can take away. And it's great to have an expert talking, but including something that we were doing together, I really think that demonstrating the application in the session, not just listening to somebody teach and then maybe ask questions, to me, those sessions are just so much more valuable in terms of what you take away from them. So I really enjoyed that one.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

When I was asking this question and I was thinking of what answer I would give, it was exactly the same answer I was gonna give. And this is surprising because, first of all, I'm not a writer, I don't write, and now that my hands shake, I can't write really. And I went only because you were on the panel, and that was the only reason I went. And I thought, okay, it's probably not gonna be for me, but I would love to hear what Abigail has to say. And I was surprised that I got so much out of it just seeing people so involved and interested in what they were doing. I also liked the session that you guys. So again, we're back to what you were saying. It's so important that LBBC has partnered with MBC organizations because we as the MBC, specifically MBC patients, we know exactly what we're interested in. So another session that I really liked was the one where you again we're calling ourselves the AAA's. Yeah, that's right. Talking about reading reports and scans. And I actually thought it was very useful. So and out for LBBC, the room they were using was absolutely packed. So in the future, when they do these important sessions, they should put them in a much bigger place than these uh breakout smaller rooms.

SPEAKER_04 24:37

So Amy Beimer, she has a PhD in microbiology, and the spinning science program is now on a platform where you can watch the videos at your leisure. And then she does office hours versus like just teaching the course because we could only do so many people with her capacity. And so now that it is a little bit more accessible, we're gonna be able to run more cohorts. So she actually announced, and it was news to Leslie, who is the CEO of Project Life, that she was gonna open up a new cohort here in the next month or so. But yes, it's a great program. And it was just a taste of what you would learn in that program. And then Amy Parliament, who does part of the spinning science class, is an add-on where Amy goes through every scan, all the preps, what you can expect, all of that. And so she did a mini version of that as well for this session. The idea that I had when we were putting the session together was about using who you are, using your background, your experience to do MBC. Because we don't come to MBC a blank slate. We come to MBC with all of what we have and all of our experiences prior to it. So we're all gonna do MBC differently. And so that was really the thrust of the session was information, yes, but also do it your way. But Jill and Ellen, what were your favorite sessions?

SPEAKER_00 26:05

As I said, I was only there for one day, and I concentrated on the two sessions that had the MD speaking about the different medications and CT DNA. I thought they were all excellent. They were all great speakers, and so I really enjoyed that. And then the rest of the time was just socializing.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

I like Ellen went to thumb and then spent the other time socializing, seeing friends, catching up with people in the back road trying to get some research funded behind the scenes. And I think honestly the personalized science one with Dr. Seth Wander, and I am linking on a fellow's name from NGH and it works with him, but she was fabulous. Yeah, Elena. Yeah, thank you. I thought that they did a really nice session, and I thought it was very helpful to people maybe farther along treatment lines and even for those who are early on, and expect you to think about all the different approaches, whether it's thinking about child or really uh about what your cancer is compared to uh what the standard might be. I really thought they opened that window really nicely.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Let's take a pause here. Because we just dropped a lot of names in the science. I think it's worth taking a moment to explain some of that. Dr. Virginia Borges is a medical oncologist and researcher specializing in breast cancer based at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, where she serves as the head of the breast cancer research program. She's particularly known for her work in metastatic and inflammatory breast cancer, as well as her research into breast cancer in young women. She's a co-founder of the Young Women's Breast Cancer Translational Program and has been a longtime advocate for bringing cutting-edge science to patients in accessible ways. Dr. Seth Wonder is a medical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. She specializes in breast cancer with a particular focus on resistance to targeted therapies in hormone receptor positive MBC. His research uses circulating tumor DNA and liquid biopsies to understand how cancers evolve and develop resistance to treatment, helping oncologists make more personalized treatment decisions. CDK46 inhibitors, drugs like palbocyclib ribocycla, and abimocycla have significantly extended survival for many people with hormone receptor positive MBC. And the CERDs, or estrogen receptor degraders, represent the next wave of that innovation. And that explosion of new drugs is really at the heart of what we were all feeling at this conference. Let me get back to that. I'm glad you brought it up. What did you guys think of the uh level of presentation? Again, this was a very difficult group of people, right? It was a difficult audience because there were a lot of newly diagnosed people, probably who have very little knowledge, but there were also 40% like us who actually are pretty knowledgeable, at least we think we are. Do you think it would be a good idea for them to add the maybe before they actually start the sessions themselves to have a breakout session for the newly diagnosed to give them the pre-mar on MBC? Would that you think be helpful?

SPEAKER_04 29:54

In years past, the week leading up, we've done virtual sessions to get everybody ready for the conference. And they didn't do that this year. But to me, that would be a great here's prepping for the conference. Here's how to get your feet wet on the science if you need it. I could see that as being a really great pre, almost like pre-work for the conference. But to hear you that we're not all walking in with a level playing field in terms of our understanding. And I sat at a lot of tables trying to be very intentional about meeting people that I hadn't met because I don't always remember to do that. And I heard a lot from the people who it was their first conference or they were in that first year, that the science piece was overwhelming. But I also appreciate that LBBC always offers the sessions virtually afterwards so that people can always go back. Not all the sessions are recorded, not all of them have the visual, but being able to access those afterwards, I think, is really helpful for the ones we couldn't attend or the ones that were just very overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

I think the people that's meeting right now tend to go to other conferences as well. And I can only imagine how overwhelming those extremely large scientific conferences are. And so I really do think this conference is a great way to get the science kind of compacted in the annual update. They're not gonna go to FC yet. No, right. And so I think yes, if you're hearing that feedback, Abigail, then I I agree that some of that pre-work might be something really helpful. And so maybe that's something they'll bring back. I guess it sounds like we're not quite sure why that went away, but I think that would be helpful for all the newly diagnosed.

SPEAKER_04 31:41

I do think that the sessions this year that were taught by the doctors were better than they have been in the past. Not to say that they were not good, just that I felt like the scholarship was better, the presenters did a wonderful job.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Agreed. I thought they were out of the park. They were so informative. And it was information, most of which I was familiar with, but all of the presenters did a great job in pulling it together in a very accessible, meaningful way. So I really love that.

SPEAKER_04 32:13

Of course, we cannot say enough about Dr. Borges, who was apparently at one of the original conferences 20 years ago. I, like I said at the beginning, don't typically come to this conference to learn about the science. But I think one of the most impactful slides, other than Dr. Borgis's last slide, where she said she can't hypothesize about people's life expectancy any longer, was how she talked about the acceleration of innovation and of medications that have been approved. And then I went back and was looking at the medications that I've been on and how many of my lines of treatment have been approved after my diagnosis. And so that was such a great reminder to me. I also really appreciated this year that they put palliative care front and center. I think that is something at all levels, at all times in our experience, palliative care can be something really impactful. But so few people are given access to palliative care unless maybe they have a pain issue. And so that's how I got immediately into palliative care because I was dealing with a lot of pain, but that's not all palliative care can do. So I thought it was great that they had that breadth, that it wasn't just here's the medications. It wasn't just the personalized medicine piece, but they were also looking at quality of life and bringing that piece into the discussion.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

It was also one thing I was thinking about when I first started attending the conference. There was always, Abigail, you probably remember that as well. There was always a patient keynote speaker. I remember one year they had Kelly Davis be a keynote speaker, and that was a little controversial at the time because she was talking about mental illness, and maybe that was not necessarily the best keynote address. But in the last few years, they went away from that. There was not a patient keynote speaker. Do you think that was the right decision they made?

SPEAKER_04 34:12

As I went to other breakout sessions, and even as I look around the room at the conference, there are so many patients who have different backgrounds, who are excellent presenters, excellent speakers. And I didn't see that same level in some of the breakout sessions. So yeah, I would love to see that come back and get to hear from patients who are really making a difference. I think that was the one of the purposes of the change makers elevating patients that have really moved things forward. I thought that was a great addition to the conference this year. Obviously, they were looking at those people who had gotten their start at LBBC, which I think is perfectly appropriate because so many of us have launched from that. But if I look at the people who are still living on that list, I'd love to hear from them, sometimes more than some of the doctors.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

I have to say that we were planning to do that. This was one of the things we wanted to do to talk live at LBBC. We didn't do it this year, but maybe next year we'll try to do it. So let's end on a very positive note. What was your high point? If you talk about this conference five years from now, what will you have remembered from this conference?

SPEAKER_04 35:25

Oh, it's the people for me.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Okay. It's definitely the people, and that the life expectancy for many people is getting longer. And that's something we see that on Facebook groups and the newly diagnosed, and how people are very hungry to find out like how many years have you been living with this? Because originally I'll say two to three years, but all of us can speak to continuing, and then the numbers of drugs that have exploded since my first diagnosis in 2017, where there was one CDK4-6 inhibitor, that's what we all got. And now there's so many more things in the explosion of thirds and other options from AI and just keep going. I'm inspired by the numbers of lines of therapy that Abigail has been on. She had been on fewer, didn't need as many, but the fact that they're available is How about this place, Twitch?

SPEAKER_01 36:27

The opportunity to get together at a place that supports living with MBC that allows us to see all the people that we want to see and have that opportunity together. I think that melding of we're all ship sailing, dealing with our version of the film, but this is a venue that's very welcoming and very comfortable and really caters to how we live to be able to bring us all together and have happier unions seeing everyone.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Right. I'm gonna wrap it up and I will say the same thing you guys have been saying, but maybe in different words. The sense of community. For us, even doing this podcast, the most rewarding thing for me doing this podcast is having you guys with me. The community that we built around this podcast. And this is what the conference helps us achieve, especially for people, probably so many of them don't know anybody else who's living with metastatic disease. Having the sense of community is overwhelming, as I said in the beginning, but it's also so incredibly rewarding. And what I would like maybe my thing about LBBC in the future, I think it would be nice, Abigail, if you continue to partner with them. I think doing a session of how people can get into advocacy, different advocacy routes, different advocacy opportunities, I think that would be very helpful for people. Maybe not when they just were diagnosed, but when they want to join the community, it would be nice to tell them in advance what it is that they can do. That's our take on Thriving Together 2026 through our eyes as MBC patients who were lucky enough to be there. But the story doesn't end here. In a few weeks, we'll go behind the scenes with the current and former members of the LBBC team, the organizers, planners, and passionate advocates who have poured their hearts into this conference year after year. We'll hear them reflect on two decades of thriving together, what the conferences has meant to the MBC community and what they hope the next twenty years will bring. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not constitute medical advice. We're patients sharing our personal experiences, not medical professionals. Always consult your health care team before making any decisions about your treatment or care. Until next time, thank you for listening.