Commentary: How Patients Have Transformed A Medical Meeting About Breast Cancer
By speaking up, advocates at the meeting have shifted the direction of breast cancer research. Some are alive, improbably, as a consequence of new treatments enabled and promoted by their advocacy. ...
Actually, Many New Cancer Drugs May Be Helpful And Worth Trying
Perhaps the literature fails to capture the clinical value of oncology drugs. This could happen for several reasons...
At The World’s Largest Cancer Meeting, Doctors Discuss Safety Of Pregnancy After Breast Cancer
Now, there’s ample data to assuage most concerns. Among 1207 women with breast cancer before age 50, those who later delivered babies experienced no more likelihood of recurrence than did those who didn’t bear more children...
The Paradoxical Benefits Of A Web App For Cancer Patients
“This tool brings us closer to the country doctor model,” Basch said. “I never thought that survival would be impacted.”...
Taboo, The Black Eyed Peas Musician, Has A Message For Cancer Patients
I’m speaking to people of all communities, he said. With “cancer there’s no prejudice. There’s no age limit. It can happen to anybody.”...
Magic Johnson’s HIV Story Offers Hope For Cancer Patients
Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the basketball legend, announced on November 7, 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV...
MoovCare, A Web App, Helps Cancer Patients Live Longer
“If we had a drug that caused this level of survival benefit, wouldn’t we want to go out and use it?” said Dr. Patricia Ganz...
Raising The Survival Bar, And Access To Information, On Metastatic Cancer
The public has every right to current information on what’s known about survival after a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, and for all forms of cancer...
At A Conference On Cancer, Patients Take Notes Like Their Lives Depend On It
Online communities can be terrific. But in person, patients hug one another, and develop trust, bonds that last, hopefully, from one year’s meeting to the next...
Could New Lung Cancer Meds Keep Walter White From Breaking Bad?
Today, Walter White might not be doomed by his lung cancer. The harder problem is how to pay for his care...
Why People With Metastatic Breast Cancer Want To Get Counted
The number of people living with stage 4, metastatic breast cancer is unknown...
Logistic Toxicity, An Unmeasured Burden Of Healthcare
Logistic toxicity might be defined as the administrative burden of health care. ...
Heart Health After Cancer: A Growing Concern
It’s the kind of problem a person who’s had cancer, or a doctor who’s prescribed generally helpful treatment, may not want to think about...
On The Death Of David Carr, And Cancer Survivorship
Carr’s story highlights the need for improved survivorship care. As his recent autopsy disclosed, he died with an aggressive form of lung cancer and heart disease...
Why Yes, We Should Treat Cancer
To deny new cancer treatments that might prolong life in a good way, possibly for cure or a remission, or even just to tame the disease, is a misguided proposition...
‘Lily,’ A Film About A Young Artist With Breast Cancer, And What’s Next In Her Life
What this movie gets right is the loneliness of having cancer – the feeling that kicks in when you’re awake and alive in some sort of hyper-sterile place receiving therapy, where there’s no one else...
Collateral Damage: How A Cancer Diagnosis Hurts Employment And Finances
Employment and money concerns haunt many people with all kinds of cancer, nation-wide, during and after treatment...
We Need to Talk About the Costs of Cancer Treatment
I used to think that physicians shouldn’t talk about money with their patients. That sort of conversation has the potential to render doctors’ work like an ordinary business transaction...
Get Cancer. Lose Your Job?
The harsh reality is that people who have had cancer treatment are sometimes perceived as a burden on a working group...
Finding Kindness and Introspection in ‘Half Empty,’ a Book of Essays by David Rakoff
The words we use matter enormously, not just in clinical outcomes, but in how people with cancer feel about the decisions they’ve made, years later...
Reconciling Lance Armstrong’s Story With the Realities of Cancer Survival
In retrospect it’s clear that we — patients and their kids, parents, lovers, nurses, doctors, physical therapists and social workers, all of us in cancerland — wanted Armstrong to win...
Who’s a Survivor?
Survivor seems a strange term for a patient like me, said by her oncologist to be in remission—meaning that there’s no overt evidence of persistent cancer cells in the body...
Chemo: A Treatment That Could Wind Up Giving You (Another) Cancer
Few cancer patients take notes on chemo dose options and potential long-term side effects...
On Sheryl Crow’s Report that She Has a Meningioma, and Singing Loud
Singing “Rock and Roll,” on top of a piano...
The Outlier’s Message, and Evolutionary Science in Breast Cancer
If a drug helps, keep it going; if it hurts, stop. There are so many algorithms in medicine, and molecular tools, but maybe the bottom line is how the, one, your patient is doing...
The “Survivor” Term After Breast Cancer: Is There a Better Expression?
The question is, what’s the right, PC and emotionally sound, sensitive but not sappy term to describe the situation of a person who’s living after breast cancer? Some might say, who cares if you’ve had it?...
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