As you probably know, a great deal of money is invested each year in breast cancer research. Some funds are used to develop new, and hopefully better, drug treatments. Some are aimed at discovering the cause of the disease.

And now a new focus for research funds is emerging: Quality-of-life issues for breast cancer survivors. For those of us who've had breast cancer, this new funding target is long overdue.

It's one thing to survive breast cancer, but if you are left with chronic joint pain, menopausal symptoms that won't subside, self-image problems, fertility issues, fears about recurrence, cognitive functioning difficulties, and many other factors that can affect your ability to enjoy life in the years ahead, you just might pause and wonder a bit.

Why has no attention been paid to these issues thus far? As more and more women become long-term survivors, researchers need to put these concerns front and center on their radar screens.

The size of the research money pie doesn't grow exponentially each year. It increases a little, but not enough to take care of the expanding research needs.

Here's a question for all of you out there to weigh in on: If you were the one in charge of divvying up the money pie, how big of a wedge would you cut out for each of these issues?

• Quality-of-life research
• New drug treatments
• Identifying the causes of breast cancer
• New technologies for diagnosing the disease earlier

I'm really interested in what you think, so please chime in.