by Kristina Fiore
Jennifer Goodman Linn, 39, has been through five surgeries and six rounds of chemotherapy since 2004, trying to control the sarcoma that keeps growing in her abdomen.
Goodman Linn has what her doctors call a rare form of a rare cancer — an MFH sarcoma, also known as an undifferentiated high grade pleiomorphic sarcoma. It’s remained confined to her retroperitoneal …
Cycling helps this patient with a sarcoma
My father passed away about two weeks ago after battling a brain tumor for some time.
Initially diagnosed with an extensive inoperable mass one and one-half years ago, upon presenting with a focal seizure, he did well with only one medication for seizure control for about ten months. Around Christmas of 2009, however, he landed in the hospital in status epilepticus that took three days to control. After these days of …
Marginal treatments at a high emotional cost from families
We say we exchange words when we meet. What we exchange is souls.
-Minot J. Savage
It was Monday evening. The shelves in the electronics department overflowed with different styles, prices, and brands of headphones, all displayed in sealed plastic cases. I was in the mood to buy but was baffled by the array of options in front of me. This was not going to be as simple as I had thought.
A young …
When patients are willing to share their stories
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer diagnosed in the United States.
There are three major types: basal cell, squamous cell and melanoma. Of those, basal cell and squamous cell are most common, accounting for about 3.5 million cases in the United States per year. Although, these types typically do not metastasize, they can be quite disfiguring, particularly after resection when they occur on the face. On a population …
How you can avoid skin cancer risk
If you’re relatively young and healthy, gynecologic cancers probably aren’t on your radar. But they should be.
This year, more than 80,000 women in the United States will get a gynecologic cancer, such as endometrial (a.k.a. uterine), ovarian or cervical cancer. In general, gynecologic cancers occur more frequently in women after menopause, although they can occur in younger women. While all women …
10 cancer signs women shouldn’t ignore
I just don’t understand how someone can live in this day and age and deny the effectiveness of scientifically sound medical treatment when dealing with breast cancer. I was completely flummoxed when I came across the in-depth and thoughtful post “A horrifying breast cancer ‘testimonial’ for ‘holistic’ treatment” on Respectful Insolence, written by a surgeon and scientist who uses the pen name Orac.
Like others who came before and surely will come after …
How can anyone deny scientifically sound treatment for breast cancer?
by Krupali Tejura, MD
I am treating a patient for head and neck cancer — which can be one of the most harrowing therapies.
To receive chemotherapy and radiation concurrently can be pretty debilitating. Swallowing foods can be next to impossible, and the taste changes and saliva changes are brutal. It’s one of the harshest areas to treat … and I warn the patients beforehand: …
Root beer bonds a chemotherapy patient with his oncologist
Cancer prevention is built around screening. In screening, the hope is to catch cancer at an earlier stage than it would be found otherwise and increase options for treatment and chances of cure. In some cases, screening prevents cancer — for example, when a precancerous polyp is removed from the colon during colonoscopy — but generally it is aimed at early detection.
What if instead we could prevent cancer from developing …
Tamoxifen for breast cancer prevention is not routinely used
It’s exceedingly uncommon for a healthy middle-aged man to walk into his doctor’s office and demand a colonoscopy. But even though he lacked a family history, Stanley Thornton, an African-American engineer who was then in his mid-40’s, wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I was concerned that African-Americans do get colorectal cancer earlier, and I said, ‘hey, let me lead by example,’” he said recently. “We argued about it for a …
Colonoscopy and other screening options for colon cancer
An excerpt from Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig.
Last month Dave deBronkart, known on the internet as “e-Patient Dave,” released his first book, Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig: How an Empowered Patient Beat Stage IV Cancer (and what healthcare can learn from it) (www.LaughSingBook.com).
It’s his personal cancer story – excerpts from the journal he kept …
Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig: Facing death, with hope
They made a regal couple, the elderly man and woman sitting in Room 19. She was the patient, he the supportive husband. She sat in the treatment cot while he sat in a chair pulled near her bedside. Together, they greeted me with their warm smiles as I walked into their room.
They both had full heads of healthy, silvery hair that shimmered from the overhead fluorescent bulbs. Their eyes were …
Metastatic cancer and the matching walkers
I received a very troubling phone call from a close friend recently. He underwent a study, at the age of 40, and the physician came out of the procedure and said, “you have a large tumor, do you want me to call a surgeon for you.”
The purpose of this post is not to comment on the physician’s behavior or delivery techniques, but to define this very precarious and anxiety producing …
Minimize patient waiting after a potential cancer diagnosis
Pathologists and radiologists don’t have the luxury of spending time with actual patients so they have to render professional judgments and determinations based on indirect data (radiographs, a mashed up slice of breast tissue, etc.).
I don’t envy them; the utter detachment from patient care would make me miserable. But they do have a tough job. They get one shot at getting it right. There’s no patient follow up. They never …
When a biopsy cannot completely rule out cancer
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by Crystal Phend
Mobile phone base station towers boost cell reception, not childhood cancer risk, a British population-based study showed.
Children whose mothers lived near a high-output cell phone antenna mast while pregnant were no more likely to develop childhood cancer than those who lived farther away, found Paul Elliott, MBBS, PhD, of Imperial College London, and colleagues.
Exposure to an intermediate level of cell tower power output was associated with an adjusted …
Cell towers do not increase childhood cancer risk
by Crystal Phend
Deferring curative treatment for low-risk prostate cancer may be a good option for many men ages 70 and younger, a population-based observational study affirmed.
In the national Swedish prostate cancer registry, the cumulative 10-year prostate cancer-specific mortality rate was only 2.4% for men at low risk who opted for watchful waiting or active surveillance, according to Pär Stattin, MD, PhD, of Umeå University Hospital in Umeå, Sweden, and colleagues.
This …
Watchful waiting may be appropriate for most prostate cancer cases
If you have to ask what jazz is, you will never know.
– Louis Armstrong
The stillness in the meeting room was electric.
First, one panelist addressed the audience members who have never experienced a malignancy. She described the unique and powerful bond that exists between cancer survivors. She described how the brush with mortality forces each survivor to renegotiate terms with Life itself. She reminded everyone that the cancer care system too often lets …
Cancer patients need compassion and balanced information
by Kristina Fiore
Physicians do not appear likely to reduce the frequency of cervical cancer screening — not even with the availability of the sensitive human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA test, researchers say.
When given a clinical vignette of a 35-year-old woman with a normal Pap test and a negative HPV test, only 19% of the more than 1,200 physicians surveyed said they would wait three years before conducting another Pap test, Mona …
Is the PAP test for cervical cancer screening being overused?
May you never be an interesting case.
That’s a cautionary proverb familiar to medical professionals. While it’s bad to get sick, it’s much worse to get sick with something uncommon or unusual. The more fascinating a case is for doctors, the more difficult it is for patients. Difficult to diagnose, difficult to treat, and often difficult to survive.
Kenneth Liew was doubly unfortunate. He was an interesting medical case and an interesting …
Cancer in a transplant kidney, is it the doctor’s fault?
Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times writes about a new report from the President’s Cancer Panel calling attention to the role common chemicals may play in the development of cancer.
The overarching message is that we should be exercising much more caution in our trust of chemicals.
I am not familiar with the nuances of regulatory policies for chemicals, but (as Kristof points out) the “existing regulatory presumption [is] that …
Chemicals that cause cancer can’t be accurately studied
When do tests improve mortality?
This is a question well worth asking, particularly as we argue about the merits of mammography screening. The USPSTF has really stirred up the hornet’s nest with this one, and the politicians cannot help but get on their populist pulpit, ignoring the facts completely.
But the question remains, do screening or diagnostic tests that are more sensitive save lives? We all hear that mortality from many diseases …
Screening studies that blur the mortality and case fatality line
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