North Bay Woman

F A L L 2 0 1 4 | NORTH BAY WOMAN 19 By Julia Prodis Sulek Photos by Stuart Lirette How Lis Fuchs fights breast cancer every day Grace and Positivity Left: Lis Fuchs her husband Mike at the San Francisco Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in July 2014. Above: Lis Fuchs with friends and family at the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. She looks so young and healthy. Efferves- cent smile. Bouncy blond hair. A young Doris Day. With a newly adopted puppy named Keeper, she takes daily hikes through the hills behind her Mill Valley home. Just last summer, with her three sons and husband at her side, she joined a 39-mile walk through the streets of San Francisco. Who would believe that Lis Fuchs, who just turned 50 but looks a decade younger, has incurable, stage 4 breast cancer? "I don't look like a cancer patient, but under the surface many of my female body parts are gone – a double mastectomy, no more ovaries," said Lis, whose full name is pronounced "Liss Fox." "That's what breast cancer does. It attacks ev- erything about what it means to be a woman." Unfortunately, she has joined what she calls the "family vocation" of battling breast cancer. All but one of her seven female relatives received the diagnosis – her mother, her great-grandmother, two aunts, her father's only sister and her only female cousin. Three of those relatives have had recurrences this year. But unlike the other women in her family, Lis's cancer has spread beyond the breast. Her entire skeletal structure is dotted with it. Earlier this year, doctors found that it had > "More often than you think, you cannot control all that life brings you. What you can control is your attitude."

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