Wendy Harpham on Healthy Survivorship

The Power of Normalizing

When people who are newly diagnosed with cancer resist taking needed chemotherapy, a common reason is their fear of damaging their immune system and being more vulnerable. If this anxiety remains unchecked, it can interfere with getting good care and/or living as fully as possible.

What's a Healthy Survivor to do?

Thanks for Giving

Thank you for subscribing to this blog on Healthy Survivorship.

Thank you for your insightful comments and helpful suggestions in response to my posts.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cognitive Override

Healthy Survivors (1) obtain sound knowledge, (2) find and nourish hope and (3) take effective action.

As a physician, I'm fascinated by the ways patients overcome the many obstacles to acting on sound knowledge in life-enhancing ways.

Mindful Exercise

In Healing Walks for Hard Times, Carolyn Kortge, a breast cancer survivor, encourages readers to integrate mindfulness into their walks.

Healing Walks

An aphorism from the business world may help on the path to Healthy Survivorship: The current system is perfectly designed to deliver the results it does.

So if you don't like the way things are going under the circumstances, change something! Today I am blogging about changing how you walk.

105-Year-Old Healthy Survivor

Esther Mauzy can teach us all a thing or two about how to become a Healthy Survivor.

"Why Me?" -- Part II

I'm an outlier. Of all the patients diagnosed in 1990 with Stage III follicular lymphoma, I'm one of a small minority who are still kickin'. Why me?

Today I am not asking "What in the grand plan of the divine explains my extraordinary survivorship?" Rather, I'm asking "What is it about my physical body and/or my particular cancer that I've had a much-better-than-average response to the treatments?"  

20 Years Later: Why Me?

The details of certain awful moments stay fresh in your memory, such as where you were and what you were doing when the planes hit the World Trade Centers on the morning of 9/11/2001.

For me, one of those painful moments occurred on a Tuesday morning in 1990. Twenty years ago today, my oncologist walked into my hospital room and gently told me I had cancer.

This anniversary stirs two main emotions.

Promise Me -- A Sampling

In my last post, I recommended Promise Me, by Nancy Brinker, with Joni Rogers. One reason is the unusual and effective presentation of Brinker's story.

Promise Me

Regular readers of this blog know if I review a book, I'm going to recommend it. Today's post is no different. Thumbs up for Promise Me by founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure Nancy G. Brinker, with best-selling author Joni Rodgers.

The Future of Cancer Research

In "The Cancer Sleeper Cell," oncologist Mukherjee shares his insights about the future of cancer research.

The Weed of Cancerous Tumors

When it comes to understanding cancer relapse, what is the significance of a cancer stem cell? According to a recent article by oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, maybe everything.

In Search of the Cancer Stem Cell

My last post referenced an interesting article on cancer relapse. Oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee introduces the reader to the star of the day when it comes to understanding relapse: the stem cell.

Riddle of Relapse

For all survivors, relapse means they weren't cured. For most, it means they never will be. Oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee wrote a NYTimes article about tackling the challenge of cancer relapse.

Emotional Clinicians

In my last post I introduced the idea that clinicians' emotions can be useful in the care of patients. Here are a few examples of how this could be so: