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.
Continue reading "Calling all Patients!" »
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.'"
Continue reading "Faltering Cancer Trials" »
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.
Continue reading "Super-subspecialist" »
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."
Continue reading "The Good News About Cancer" »
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 )
Continue reading "In Reporting Symptoms, Don't Patients Know Best?" »
Nope, it's not a spelling error. Today I'm talking about taking something uncomfortable and making it fun: fundraising.
Continue reading "Fun-raising" »
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.
Continue reading "Surviving Horrible Mistakes" »
White coat hypertension (white coat syndrome) is when patients' blood pressure (BP) readings are high in clinical settings and normal in other settings.
Continue reading "White Coat Hypertension" »
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.
Continue reading "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.
Continue reading " Palliative Care Doctor Refuses Palliative Care" »
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?
Continue reading "Too Calm" »
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.
Continue reading "Doing the Right Thing" »
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:
Continue reading "Berk is Back" »