Do you have resources to deal with cancer that go beyond understanding treatment? Patients like me certainly spend a lot of time talking about treatments, and research into better treatments, which makes a lot of sense. But that’s just part of the cancer journey. Patients and caregivers also have personal struggles, often a family struggle, [...]
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I have always been struck by the development of the field of medical oncology. It’s really not that old a specialty even though cancer has been around for eons. It used to be that surgeons cut out what they could when you were diagnosed with cancer. And after a while most people died from their [...] The other day in the local supermarket I bumped into a neighbor who gave me bad news. She said a friend in town had been diagnosed with a stage four cancer and was in the midst of treatment. The patient is someone I am fond of and I was shocked to hear about her illness. [...] I can’t get the 1989 baseball movie Field of Dreams out of my head. That’s especially true right now as I can’t wait for the seventh game of the World Series. My son, Eitan, and I sat on the couch and watched the sixth game last night and it was probably the most exciting game [...] Thank God television and movie script writers are starting to “get it.” Cancer, “The Big C,” doesn’t always kill people, or maim them, or steal their dreams. Lately there have been new TV shows acknowledging cancer as part of life that many can live through. There’s a new movie coming called 50/50 about a young [...] Today Andrew Pollack, reporter for The New York Times, wrote a front page story about Dr. Lowy, hot chemo, and how other medical centers are now picking up on it for other advanced cancers including colon and ovarian. They are even advertising it as one last bit of hope when often there is virtually none. Now, some of the big names in GI cancers are suggesting this approach has merit and may offer longer survival then some super expensive drugs. There’s a debate going on. [...] Watch Andrew’s latest video blog from Chicago where he attended the 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting. Maybe you read the other day in The New York Times that the pharmaceutical industry has a problem. Big blockbuster drugs like Lipitor are going off patent and the industry leaders don’t have new blockbusters showing promise to replace them. So the big companies search for little companies with new discoveries and they consider buying [...] |
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