According to a study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago this week, more than 95 percent of the time, cancer specialists accurately recognize the presentation of side effects of cancer treatment years after the treatment is completed. That’s compared to primary care doctors who are much less successful in identifying the same late stage side effects. The findings don’t infer that primary doctors are less-than-excellent physicians. Cancer is only one subset of diseases they face in their practices. It’s not expected that primary care doctors can be specialists in everything.
For cancer survivors and those who treat them, the study’s findings stress the importance of communication between primary healthcare providers and cancer specialists. It demonstrates the need for a team-based approach to cancer survivorship planning and cancer rehabilitation. Communication and information exchange is key to such planning, with the goal being that the patient, the primary care doctor, and the cancer treatment team remain in constant communication after the patient completes treatment.
Continue reading Planning to Survive Cancer→
By Beth Sanders Moore on March 8, 2012 2:53 pm
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Tagged #ICanGoForward, breast cancer, cancer survivor, CancerForward, esophageal cancer, Hodgkin’s disease, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Nancy Moncrief, National Cancer Survivors Day, prostate cancer research, Ronald McDonald House, sharing, survivor story, survivorship, Texas Children’s Hospital, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, thyroid cancer
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On May 23 of this year, in celebration of National Cancer Survivors Day 2012, CancerForward will have the great fortune to honor a three-time cancer survivor whose journey with cancer is worthy of national news coverage. Yet, she has not sought to place herself under a key light or in front of a camera. Not because she’s modest about her situation or afraid to speak out. She sees herself as one of millions who have traveled the same road as she has. She believes hers is not a unique story.
I completely and personally understand her. For years, I, a rather modest person by nature, thought it uninteresting to anyone to share my survivor story. It took me several years to realize that the sharing of experience is helpful to other survivors and could be helpful to me.
I told our National Cancer Survivors Day honoree that I understood her reticence to allow her friends to honor her survivorship. I urged her to consider it thoughtfully but in the framework of what would be healthy for her. She immediately responded, “It is what it is. There’s no reason to shy away from it. It can help others” And, so, we honor a survivor who now a grandmother has fought cancer since age 12 and four years ago lost her husband to cancer far too early in his life.
Continue reading Has Anyone Ever Fought Cancer More Tenaciously, More Gracefully?→
Borrowed from Sharon Bray,
Writing Through Cancer
(www.writingthroughcancer.com)
“Breathe in,” my yoga teacher spoke softly as she led us through a closing meditation. “Fill yourself with gratitude,” she said.
I inhaled, filling my lungs with air, and then exhaled slowly, trying to clear my mind–a perpetually challenging task. “Gratitude.” I silently repeated the word to myself on each inhale, until it seemed I had actually filled my body, my entire being with gratitude. I drove home smiling, feeling lighter than I had two hours earlier as I’d combatted traffic and stop lights to get to my class on time. When I reached my house, I sat at my desk, opened my notebook and made a gratitude list. The page was quickly filled with the names of people who, because of their love, kindness and friendship, have enriched my life.
It wasn’t until this morning that it struck me: my gratitude list was incomplete. For as often as I’ve tried, over the years, to cultivate a practice of letting the people in my life know how much I appreciate them–with letters, little gifts, thank you notes, or, as February 14th nears, even valentines–I am remiss at remembering to appreciate someone in particular.
That someone is a person much like you. She’s has struggled at different times in her life and sometimes won, grieved but often rejoiced, loved (often too well), and sometimes lost. Her body has weathered surgeries, cancer and heartache but it still serves her well, doing its yeoman’s work day in and day out. Her face shows the tell-tale signs of age, and her joints often broadcast her age when she tries to do a new yoga pose. But that someone is more often greeted with an exasperated sigh as she looks in her magnifying mirror to put on her makeup. She sometimes wilts under the harsh words of a fierce internal critic, who trounces all over her writing at regular intervals. She often forgets to be grateful for the person who stares back at her from the mirror. Her face, with all its evidence of a life lived, her body, her unique gifts. That person is me.
Continue reading Sarah Bray Suggests for Valentine’s Day, I Should Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter→
Today is World Cancer Day, the theme of which in 2012 is “Cancer Can Be Prevented.” The most important pledge you can make today is not monetary. It is your pledge to make healthy living choices, including individual lifestyle changes.
I eat a healthy diet, I exercise 2 hours daily, I don’t smoke, and I’ve taken the medical advice my docs earlier this year gave me: I should no longer drink alcohol. But, my lifestyle is still not a healthy one. I lead a very stressful life.
My pledge today is to avoid stress without creating stress to get there. Stress is a key cause of heart disease among women. In all of us, it significantly weakens the immune system…a body part in cancer survivors already wrecked by the disease itself and every treatment we apply to get rid of cancer.
I’ve learned that avoiding stress is not so tough and getting there doesn’t necessarily add more stress. It’s a lifestyle change to be sure, so it’s required some adjustments in my life and I can see places that will require more changes.
What a gift I owe to the person who taught me meditation and mindfulness: how to live in the moment, not regret the past; not sweat the future. Heightened spirituality will reduce stress if I seek it every day; and, it fits hand-in-glove with mindfulness. I try to seek it. All I can do it try. No stress.
I’ve found marked stress-reduction by staying in a circle of compassionate, supportive, genuine friends and embracing those relationships. Even if the circle is sometimes a circle of three, I accept it as bounty.
And like many people, I’ve figured out that I’m more at peace and less in stress if I quietly step around those whose values don’t mesh with mine. I had to find that out for myself and the hard way.
On this World Cancer Day, I pledge to fight the fight as arduously as ever, without political divisiveness, over-zealousness or disregard to the underlying purpose of my work. It is stressful at times to make my voice heard for a cause that has struggled for years to become mainstream. But, if I fight the fight fairly, I’ll get closer to the goal with less stress. I may not be the first to score. That’s unimportant to me. With conviction void of stress, it’s enough to know I chose to remain healthy…physically, emotionally, fiscally and spiritually…and fought the best that I could.
Yesterday, CancerForward was fortunate to be recognized by Texas Children’s Cancer Center as its 2011 Torch of Champions Honoree. The occasion was the 4th Annual Celebration of Champions Luncheon which salutes survivors who have been treated at the Center. The event raises important funding for family-centered care for children, adolescents and young adults with cancer and blood disorders.
CancerForward was very proud to be a part of the day. Championing cancer survivors is what we’re all about. It’s very important that every person who has survived a cancer diagnosis knows that there are people who are supporting them not merely to overcome cancer, but to be the BEST cancer survivor he or she can be.
Continue reading We All Hold Torches of Championship→
By Beth Sanders Moore on March 15, 2011 8:08 pm
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Tagged Beth Sanders Moore, cancer research, cancer survivors, cancer survivorship, Centers for Disease Control, epidemic, health insurance, healthcare providers, late-stage medical issues, oncologists
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According to a report issued last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the number of cancer survivors in the United States increased to 11.7 million in 2007….nearly a 20 percent rise in the number of survivors living in 2001.
Why the increase? Primarily, we can look to the early detection of cancers and improved diagnostic methods. And, the CDC report predicts the number of cancer survivors will continue to increase as time wears on. Is that a good thing? Of course, it is! But, when nearly four percent of the U.S. population are cancer survivors, there is a higher need for focus among health care providers and policy makers on issues that are unique to cancer survivors.
Continue reading Cancer Survivorship: A Raging Epidemic?→
The older we get, the more concerned we become with self-improvement and new year’s resolutions. Kids seem to remain blissfully free from the pressure to make major changes in a new year. We adults might have something to learn from them. How about: less stress… more fun!
The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests these new year’s resolutions for children. Try these on the cancer survivor mannequin. I think they work! Consider these simple resolutions to help all you kids live healthier, happier life…and all good wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2011!
I will drink lots of water, and limit soda and fruit drinks.
I will eat at least one fruit and one vegetable every day.
Continue reading Resolutions for cancer survivors: Kid stuff!→
By Beth Sanders Moore on December 23, 2010 11:56 am
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Tagged abandonment, anxiety, cancer, cancer diagnosis, cancer rehabilitation, cancer survivors, Christmas, depression, God, isolation, Merry Christmas, millennium, spiritual renewal
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When I awoke December 25, 2000, everything in my life was at its best, or so I thought. I was the magical age of 45…that place in the continuum where respectable adults can still wear the fringe of unbridled youth, or at least hope to…try to. I celebrated the first year of the millennium with gusto. Great gusto. And, so I celebrated that Christmas, as reverently as ever but without a care in the world.
In a few hours from now, I will joyously celebrate Christmas, with no less enthusiasm and excitement than I did Christmas of 2000. However, Christmas 2010 is framed very differently, washed in a patina that only God’s grace can create. It’s a fabulously rich patina that I could not have fashioned myself, or quite frankly, even imagined.
Continue reading Ten Years of Christmases→
 Prior to 2000, I knew Elizabeth Edwards only tangentially at best, primarily through legal and political circles in which she and my family had worked for many years. I first met her just after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was not yet a part of her life. I would next see her again on the 2004 campaign trail and after her cancer diagnosis, often. Our personal relationship bonded in the fight against breast cancer and for health care policies related to cancer survivorship. I talked to her last on September 30, after she completed an interview for CancerForward to be posted the following day and throughout the month of October as a tribute to breast cancer awareness month. The piece turned out to be more of a message to survivors of all cancers than a plug for breast health awareness, yet it still was Elizabeth’s public statement – her only public statement — in tribute to Breast Cancer Awareness Month. My astute and supportive friend knew exactly what she was doing…all that she could and that I could ever have asked her to do in support of the fledging new Foundation For Cancer Survivors. Her gift, as she and I both saw it, gave immediate and energetic lift to CancerForward and in one fell swoop, cemented its footing on the global stage as a the resource it was created to be to cancer survivors all over the world. She believed in its mission. There were plans made for her further and more dynamic involvement. She gave us life, much of which is to be revealed within mere weeks.
Continue reading A Message From Elizabeth→
I see it, hear it, taste it, smell it. We’re upon the holiday season, a time of celebration that has special and unique meanings to each of us. You really don’t want to hear about what the holidays mean to me; but, you may be interested to hear about a child, which in many different ways is central to the season and happens to be for me, at the essence of the season.
A child….an adolescent…a young adult. Exactly when does one pass from childhood through the phases of maturation? It really doesn’t matter when you consider as a collective population what children, adolescents and young adults face in cancer.
Each year, nearly 80,000 adolescents and young adults between the ages of 12 and 40 are diagnosed with cancer.
Continue reading ’Tis The Season for Children and Young Adults→
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