Here’s what they should have told you: “We found cancer in your lymph nodes, your liver, your lungs, and your brain. It explains your weight loss, your difficulty breathing and your loss of appetite. This wasn’t just your depression l…
Category: Oncology/Hematology
Cancerversary: The most wonderful term you wish you’d never heard
My husband recently planned a beautiful evening for me at our favorite restaurant, complete with a night away at a boutique hotel in wine country, in honor of my “cancerversary,” which for me marked one year since being diagnosed with breast cancer at …
How can we fix the research bias from industry sponsorship?
Late last year the New York Times reported that Dr. José Baselga, the chief medical officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, had resigned for failing to disclose his conflicts of interest at professional meetings and in scientific and medical…
Tucked in: an image that gives a sense of peace
I need to see Justin before my workday commences. I’m a social worker at the outpatient cancer center where Justin has been treated for an aggressive colon cancer. Seeing him today means visiting him in the hospital, up the road from the center. …
5 things you may not know about cancer risk
There is still a lot we don’t know about cancer. A diagnosis or even the thought of a future diagnosis can be scary. And what about your cancer risk? Many patients ask me “If a close family member has cancer, does that mean I will too?” Through heredit…
Screening elderly men for prostate cancer: More harm than good?
Most men diagnosed with prostate cancer don’t die of the disease. Between 2011 and 2015, 112.6 per 100,000 men per year were diagnosed with prostate cancer in the U.S., but only 19.5 per 100,000 men per year died of the disease over that same period of…
CBD: What is it? A former DEA agent explains.
What is CBD? Cannabidiol or CBD for short is made from either the marijuana plant that contains tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or hemp which contains little to any THC. “Hemp-derived” means that the CBD generally contains less than 0.3% THC while “marijuan…
The carcinogen of excess weight
What if I told you our children were being exposed to a known carcinogen, and it was increasing with successively younger kids? If that carcinogen were a preservative in packaging or chemicals from industrial waste, there would be widespread outcry. Bu…
Using the Avengers to explain how cancer treatments work
In a recent talk I gave for colleagues, I ventured outside the box. I searched for a metaphor to make cancer treatments easy to understand. Around the same time, it so happened my kids decided we needed to re-watch all of The Avengers movies at home. (…
It’s time to change the face of lung cancer
“Please don’t tell my family,” Mary (identifying information changed) immediately asked me after I disclosed the results of her lymph node biopsy and diagnosis of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. At the time, I was a first-year oncology fel…
