Debra Sherman died Tuesday of lung cancer after more than a year of living with the disease. She spent her final days sharing what she learned about cancer with readers.
The most recent employment report from the U.S. Labor Department showed the job market remained tough in January. If it’s difficult for healthy individuals to get a job, what is it like for cancer survivors?
In my last blog post, I wrote about pain and addiction, and quoted my palliative care doctor. Some readers took that to mean that I am at the end of the road, so to speak, since I am calling for palliative care. No, I’m not! (At least I hope I’m not.)
I was a bit surprised by how readily this new physician I visited agreed to prescribe more pain medication for me. My previous experience before I was a cancer patient was that doctors were unwilling to prescribe highly addictive drugs — but they weren’t palliative care doctors, like him.
At a time when there are so many vital questions to ask, and research budgets everywhere are under attack, I wonder why well-meaning researchers pick obvious questions to ask. Is it easier to get funding? Are they cheaper to execute? Is the bar lower?
The oncologist is the person who will look after my cancer for the rest of my life, however long it lasts. I need to trust him or her implicitly. Just for starters, I need to trust the treatments prescribed for me will work, even if they make me feel sicker than I felt in the first place.
Certain foods long have been known to help ward off cancer. Nutrients found in broccoli, cabbage and blueberries, for example, have the capability to sweep away cancer cells floating around a healthy body. But can they help someone who already has cancer, like me?
If you decided to travel for your cancer treatment, there are resources that can help lighten the financial load.
When faced with cancer, here are some tips to decide if it is best to rely on local medical care or consider traveling to a big-name medical center given the hassle and expense.
I recently spoke with Dr. Leonard Lichtenfeld, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for the ACS. I told him how I wished I had undergone screening earlier, thinking my cancer would have been caught before it could spread to my bones and my brain. “I would not have screened you,” he said bluntly.
