She was crowned Miss Venezuala in 2000 at the age of 17. The next year, she was third runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant. On Saturday, Eva Ekvall died of breast cancer at the age of 28.
The beauty queen turned model, actress and television news anchor wrote a book – Fuera de Foco (Out of Focus) describing and illustrating her struggle with breast cancer. Venezuelans followed Ekvall’s journey closely.
She was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in February 2010. Her eight months of treatment included a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation.
Ekvall had noticed a lump in her breast months earlier but thought this was due to her pregnancy.
She said at the time, “I was very angry because I should have known. My aunt had breast cancer twice and my grandmother died from breast cancer. And I just let time go.”
Last year in an interview with the newspaper El Nacional, Ekvall said she wrote the book because “I needed to send the message of the need for cancer prevention.”
The book included pictures of her going through chemotherapy. In the same newspaper interview, she said, “Nobody ever said cancer is pretty or that I should look like Miss Venezuela when I have cancer.”
Along with the book, Ekvall became an advocate for a cancer awareness group SenosAyuda.
She was married to radio producer John Fabio Bermudez. They had a 2-year-old daughter.
In her book, she described her joy at being a mother saying, “that happiness, although (the daughter) may not know it or understand it, keeps me alive today.”
‘Sadly, cancer had the last word,’ writer Leonardo Padron told Globovision.
In the United States, one out of every eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer sometime in her life. In 2010, there were over 250,000 new cases of breast cancer in women, and the number is rising. While treatment is improving, almost 40,000 women still died from breast cancer during 2009. However, there are still 2.5 million women in the US who are survivors.
Breast cancer, like any other cancer, is malignant, uncontrolled growth of breast tissue, usually from the tissue that lines the milk ducts (ductal carcinoma) or the tissue that makes the milk (lobular carcinoma). When cancer has not invaded other parts of the breast, it is referred to as in situ. (ex. Ductal carcinoma in situ). Breast cancers are also defined by their genes and hormone sensitivity. Some grow in response to the presence of estrogen, and area called ER+. Others have specific genes that make the cancer more aggressive, such as the gene HER2. These are important distinctions that direct treatment and prognosis.