Wendy Harpham on Healthy Survivorship

Calling all Patients!

Will someone please explain this to me: Clinical trials are the modern tool for finding truths about preventing and treating cancer. Yet our system puts obstacles in the path of clinicians who might participate in designing and running trials and in the path of patients who might enroll in trials.

Faltering Cancer Trials

Faltering Cancer Trials should get everyone's attention. The NYTimes Opinion piece opens, "The nation's most important system for judging the clinical effectiveness of cancer treatments is approaching 'a state of crisis.'"

Super-subspecialist

Illness and injury can cause losses that make it impossible to continue your chosen career. If your work was not just a job but the fruition of your dream, the loss can be especially painful.

The Good News About Cancer

In the May 2010 issue of Ladies Home Journal,Susan Crandall begins her article, "When Wendy Harpham, MD, learned she had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma 19 years ago, her first thought was for her kids. She was only 36, but as a doctor she knew the scary stats: Her life expectancy was only about seven years. ...But advances in medicine transformed her prognosis and her future. Harpham is a member of a small but growing contingent of cancer patients who live with metastatic or otherwise-incurable disease for years, even decades."

In Reporting Symptoms, Don't Patients Know Best?

In Happiness in a Storm (p.145), I discuss how physicians sometimes dismiss their patients' complaints. In a recent NYTimes article Denise Grady introduces Dr. Ethan Basch, an oncologist who compared the symptoms reported by patients receiving chemo with the symptoms as they were recorded in their charts by their physicians and nurses. And the gap between what patients report and what physicians record in their charts is real. (See NEJM The Missing Voice of Patients in Drug-Safety Reporting )

 

Fun-raising

Nope, it's not a spelling error. Today I'm talking about taking something uncomfortable and making it fun: fundraising.

Surviving Horrible Mistakes

Fatal Distraction is a gripping article that is not about illness, but about surviving the death of a child. Although wrenching to read, this article by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gene Weingarten (2010) illustrates useful lessons for Healthy Survivors and their caregivers.

White Coat Hypertension

White coat hypertension (white coat syndrome) is when patients' blood pressure (BP) readings are high in clinical settings and normal in other settings.

Palliative Care

In my April 6th post I discuss the case of Dr. Pardi, a palliative care physician who chose to continue aggressive cancer therapy when she was dying. Letters to the editor about the article don't mention what I consider to be a key point.

Palliative Care Doctor Refuses Palliative Care

A NYTimes story of Dr. Pardi's dying illustrates that it is difficult to project what you will think or feel when faced with a grim prognosis.

Too Calm

Panicking is usually counterproductive when a loved one has a health crisis. Staying calm is adaptive, allowing you to think, communicate and act effectively. A fascinating and entertaining YouTube video of a 5-year-old girl, Savannah, demonstrates how it's done.

When might staying calm be counterproductive?

Doing the Right Thing

Healthy Survivors obtain sound knowledge, find and nourish hope and take effective action. Today I'm focusing on the last step -- taking effective action -- because I suspect it is the step that gets the least attention.

Berk is Back

You were introduced to Dr. Bradford Berk on my Feb 19th post, The Comeback Physician. I'm happy to share the update reported in the current Rochester Review: Berk is Back.

Let me draw your attention to one of Dr. Berk's key messages: