On My Mind

Yesterday I checked in on the Cancer Culture Chronicles, a thoughtful and sometimes funny blog by Anna Rachnel, who lives with metastatic breast cancer. There I learned that the author of Living With Cancer, a blog I’d read occasionally and has been in the back of my mind lately, is dead. Sadly, I never had […]

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer awareness, cancer survival, Oncology (cancer), Social Media, Wednesday Web SightingTagged , , , , , , , 3 Comments on On My Mind

Steve Jobs Takes a Medical Leave

The big health story of the week, headlining the business news, is that Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder and usual CEO, is taking another medical leave. This is hardly a surprising development, given that the 55 year old corporate leader has had a complex medical course since at least 2003. In August, 2004 he told Apple […]

Posted in Medical News, Oncology (cancer), Public IllnessTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment on Steve Jobs Takes a Medical Leave

Why I Went for My Screening Mammogram

I was afraid to get a mammogram because I didn’t want to learn I had cancer….I feared having a “false positive,” and undergoing multiple tests to evaluate abnormal images that would turn out to be nothing…I didn’t have time for all that…

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer screening, Essential Lessons, Life as a Doctor, Life as a Patient, Oncology (cancer), Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment on Why I Went for My Screening Mammogram

A Walk, or Race, for the Cure

“You can get discomboobulated in this place,” a NYC police officer told me today.

This morning, some 25,000 or so men, women and children converged on Central Park for the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s 20th annual Race for the Cure. It was my first time witnessing the event:

Posted in Annals of Pink, Breast Cancer, cancer awareness, cancer survival, Life as a Patient, Life in NYCTagged , , , , , , 2 Comments on A Walk, or Race, for the Cure

Another Take On An Ordinary Day

…Live Each Day Like There’s a Lot of Them Left….What she articulated is the idea that maybe the best thing to do after cancer is to live, essentially, as you would do otherwise, except with a bit of added balance:

Posted in cancer survival, Essential Lessons, Life, Life as a Patient, Patient Autonomy, Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , 2 Comments on Another Take On An Ordinary Day

The “Survivor” Term After Breast Cancer: Is There a Better Expression?

The question is, what’s the right, PC and emotionally-sound, sensitive but not sappy term to describe the situation of a person who’s living after breast cancer?

Some might say, who cares if you’ve had it?

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer awareness, cancer survival, Essential Lessons, language, Oncology (cancer), Psychiatry, Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , 35 Comments on The “Survivor” Term After Breast Cancer: Is There a Better Expression?

Mind over Matter? Don’t Kid Yourself (on Stress and BC)

I learned of a new study implicating stress in reduced breast cancer survival by Twitter. A line in my feed alerted me that CNN’s health blog, “Paging Dr. Gupta,” broke embargo on the soon-to-be-published paper in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. The story – that women who undergo a stress relief program live longer after […]

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer survival, clinical trials, Essential Lessons, Medical News, Oncology (cancer), Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments on Mind over Matter? Don’t Kid Yourself (on Stress and BC)

A Routine Visit

Yesterday I visited my internist. I had no particular complaint. My back hurt no more than usual. The numbness in my left foot was neither better nor worse than it was last month. I wasn’t suffering from vertigo or abdominal pain. I went because I had an appointment to see her, nothing more.

Until just a few years ago, I rarely

Posted in cancer survival, health care delivery, Life as a Patient, Patient-Doctor Relationship, Primary Care, Women's HealthTagged , , , , 1 Comment on A Routine Visit
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