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How the Patient Perspective Improved My Cancer Research and Changed My Career Path

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The first time I heard the words “you have cancer,” I was sitting in the doctor’s office with my best friend Katie. We were both 28 years old. Katie had a lump removed from her breast the Monday before Thanksgiving and I was home in New Jersey a few days before the holiday to hang out with her post surgery. We were supposed to go to DSW that Wednesday morning when she got a call that her doctor wanted to see her that day. I collapsed on the floor […]

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Running: Fuel for My Body and Soul After Cancer

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Being diagnosed with cancer stinks. It is a traumatic experience that will ripple through your life for years to come. For me it was no different. I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer at 31 and underwent treatment for a year, which included high doses of steroids. After almost two years of remission my cancer returned and had begun to spread to my uterus. My oncologist advised me that a hysterectomy was needed and within a few weeks […]

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Moving Through and Beyond Stage IV Colorectal Cancer

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By Stacy Hurt, MHA, MBA. “But I’m an athlete and a non-smoker. I do everything right!” Those were my first words to the gastroenterologist who told me that the 11cm tumor in my rectum was “most likely cancer.” You would’ve thought I’d learned the whole “life isn’t fair” lesson when my son, now 13 years old, was diagnosed with a rare genetic chromosomal disorder that rendered him without the ability to walk, talk, or care for himself in any way. […]

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Cancer at 30: Reflections on Post-Traumatic Growth

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“Dig deep within yourself, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow if you will keep digging.” —Marcus Aurelius | In December of 2015, I was in the prime of my life. I was thirty years old, recently married, and had just launched a new business. Like most young people, I didn’t expect to get sick. I exercised regularly, ate reasonably well, and otherwise tried to take care of myself. On December 19th, I went to the doctor. I had a small lump. I assumed […]

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Finding Healing Hope – By Wendy S. Harpham, MD

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Let’s discuss “hope.” After a cancer diagnosis, few topics are mentioned more…and discussed less. That’s a problem because what you hope for may mean the difference between enjoying life or feeling miserable. Maybe even between life and death. So how do you find hope? Not just any hope, but healing hope, namely hope that helps you get good care and live as fully as possible. Hope that helps you live your best life. The good news is there’s […]

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Diagnosed with Cancer? Consider Living Life Like a Professional Cyclist

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Guest Post by Mark Corroto — I recommend those diagnosed with cancer consider living life as if they are a professional cyclist. Ok, not racing 100 miles and climbing 10,000 feet of elevation, but attending to their minds and bodies as if preparing for the Amgen Tour of California. Cyclists look for every edge they can proffer to defeat opponents. For example, World Champion Peter Sagan is said to get 9 hours of sleep a night, and many […]

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Introducing PatientTrueTalk.com – A Way for Advocates to Directly Help the Newly Diagnosed

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Patient True Talk is the only patient-to-patient registry where patients and/or their caregivers can create profiles with as much information as they feel comfortable sharing, and find matching profiles based on algorithms created by some of the country’s top clinical oncologists. Patients/caregivers can also search along their diagnosis/treatment parameters, refining their search based on the results provided. They can then send secure messages […]

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A Medical School Perspective: Beyond the Science, We Must Learn to Communicate with Patients

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By Nainika Nanda, MD — Survivorship. What does this mean? Oncology highlights patients currently battling cancer. However, survivorship encompasses a longer timeline. Cancer requires lifelong care, which is achieved through proper doctor-patient communication. In fact, this relationship is a keystone of medicine. Unfortunately, it can lose focus in the sea of information medical students must master. A common analogy for medical education is […]

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Patient Assistance Programs: Do They Help or Hurt?

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By Rishi Sachdev and Yousuf Zafar, MD — New cancer drugs have improved prognoses for patients, but that improvement in effectiveness has come at a steep cost. The price tag of new anticancer drugs has been increasing at a significant pace, with the latest—Kymriah by Novartis—priced at $475,000 per treatment. These ever-increasing costs result in higher out-of-pocket costs for patients, which have been shown to worsen outcomes. […]

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Seeing the Bigger Picture of Survival Through Patient Advocacy

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As patient advocates (as in most other things in life), it seems the more we learn, the more see what we don’t know. Whether we’re involved in promoting a patient-centered approach to research, direct care, survivorship, policy change or education, there’s a daily twist and update for us to wrap our brains around. And no matter which arena we find ourselves in, we are always looking for the endpoint: How far have we come in cancer care, and how does […]

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