I have always heard that Northwestern Mutual Life (“The Quiet Company”) was a grade A company. And for years I have been happy to have a disability insurance policy and a term life one with them. I got those policies back in the early 1990’s and it was a good thing I did.
In 1996 my [...]

The news wasn’t good this week for women concerned about breast cancer.
First came the story that some women were diagnosed with breast cancer, very early stage, had treatment – including disfiguring surgery – and then found out they never had cancer in the first place. The pathologist goofed, maybe even a second pathologist also misread [...]

I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago when it became clear the American Cancer Society was mulling over whether screening recommendations should be changed for breast and prostate cancers.
The concern, of course is, are some indolent, non-aggressive cancers suspected or discovered and patients are harmed with invasive tests and/or unnecessary or premature treatment [...]

More and more people are telling me their own Powerful Patient stories. I love it!
I heard this one at lunch today in Las Vegas as I reconnected in-person with CLL friend Dave Garcia, 50, a veteran pit boss at the famous Bellagio casino.
Dave and I met via the Internet seven years ago after he was [...]

I have never had a mammogram. No doctor would recommend one for me, a 59-year-old male. But they would for any woman over 40. Yet many women don’t have them, or forget to keep having them yearly. So our partner, the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, is spearheading a novel campaign in the Pacific Northwest to [...]

Is House M.D. Right About Internet Health? from Patient Power® on Vimeo.

If the worst happened and your child was diagnosed with cancer you would probably want aggressive therapy for the child with hope for a cure, let alone to save your child’s life. In diseases like childhood leukemia these days, the vast majority of the time, aggressive therapy works.
But when it comes to chronic conditions many [...]

A new discovery from a joint venture of M.I.T. and Harvard has devised a test to see if experimental chemicals can kill cancer stem cells – the “mother,” if you will of millions of other cancer cells that mature and spread. Their theory is that, in many solid tumor types, unless you kill the cancer [...]

As you may know, I am a 13-year leukemia survivor and delighted to take no medication and live a full life every day. Because of the many interviews I do with experts it has hit home that I am at higher risk for other cancers, very late effects of the powerful medicines I took in [...]