Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
© Elaine Schattner, 2009, 2022 By : Template Sell.
Last week a video came my way via ZDoggMD, a popular blog by doctors who are not me. The Office Med School Edition — The clip is a parody of The Office about Problem Based Learning (PBL). In a typical PBL, the students meet regularly in small groups. On Monday they begin with clinical aspects of a case. The […]
This morning I walked into a Starbucks and noted a woman wearing a little pink ribbon on the lapel of her suit. She appeared to be in a meeting, speaking seriously with a small group of people dressed for business. How great is that, I thought, that she wears the pink ribbon unabashedly, in this […]
Last night Showtime aired the second season’s finale of the Big C. As usual, there was no detail whatsoever about Cathy’s advanced melanoma or treatment. I didn’t think the show could get worse, in the reality-of-having-cancer sense, but it did. Cathy, who still looks great and complains of no physical problems, determinately runs, walks and […]
With little fanfare, the NEJM published a feature on breast cancer screening in its Sept 15 issue. The article, like other “vignettes” in the Journal, opens with a clinical scenario. This time, it’s a 42 year old woman who is considering first-time mammography. The author, Dr. Ellen Warner, an oncologist at the University of Toronto, takes […]
In the city where I live, it’s hard to buy a muffin at a Starbucks without stepping back from the counter and reconsidering. Swallowing 460 calories for a minimal-nutrient breakfast seems foolish. So I eat fewer muffins than I used to. The posted nutritional tidbits, however imprecise, on the contents of pieces of quiche, slices of […]
Today I visited my internist for a checkup and flu shot. We talked about how I’m doing, and she examined me, and we discussed what procedures I ought have done and not done. She’s been my doctor since the summer of 1987, when I was an intern at the hospital. We reviewed so much that […]
A post in yesterday’s Well column, about coverage of breast cancer by the media, focused on the first-person narrative of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Journalist Tara Parker-Pope writes: Her announcement has generated much discussion in the blogosphere, including an analysis by Gary Schwitzer, publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, who writes that Ms. Mitchell made some missteps in discussing her […]
Watching the Big C feels like a chore lately. It reminds me of the feeling I used to get when I had to see and examine a patient in the hospital, under my care for some administrative non-reason, who didn’t need to be in the hospital IMO, and whose hospital presence took time my time […]
An article caught my attention in the September AARP Bulletin: The Caregiver’s Dilemma considers the 61.6 million people in the U.S. who care for older relatives or friends. People with jobs are, understandably, unsure if they should let their boss or supervisor know they’re caring for someone who’s sick. This indirect cost of illness and […]
Last weekend I saw The Help, a movie on race relations in Jackson, Mississippi 50 years ago with lingering implications for people who hire “help” to take care of their children and tend to their personal business anywhere in the world, including now. It’s a heavy-handed, simple-message and nonetheless very enjoyable film, with fine acting […]
Well, it’s the day after Labor Day, time to resume our discussion of Bending the Cost Curve in Cancer Care. We’ve reached the end of the list, on ideas to reduce oncology costs put forth by Drs. Smith and Hillner in the May 25 issue of the NEJM. Really this 10th and final point intended for […]
Dear Readers, ML will take a blogging break through Labor Day. I hope the storm doesn’t cause too much damage. Stay safe, wherever you are, and enjoy these end-of-summer days! – ES —- Related Posts:Reading LisaTalking About Physician Burnout, and Changing the SystemGive Doctors a BreakSome Articles I Authored A While AgoSteve Jobs Takes a Medical […]
Yesterday morning I wrote a short post on CelebrityDiagnosis.com. By evening, news broke that Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs resigned from his position, presumably for reasons of his health. What’s public, by Jobs’ decision, is that he had a relatively good, typically slow-growing kind of malignancy in the pancreas, a neuroendocrine islet cell tumor. He informed […]
Late Friday afternoon, the FDA announced its approval, upon accelerated review, of a new drug, Adcetris (brentuximab) for patients with Hodgkin’s lymphoma that has relapsed after bone marrow transplant and for some patients with T-cell anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL). This interests me for a lot of reasons, among them that I used to work in the field of lymphoma immunology […]
The other day, over lunch, I was reading the Sept 2011 issue of the Atlantic and came upon this image on p. 37. According to the not-so-fine print, this full-page broccoli fix is sponsored by MARS chocolate, North America, website listed: www.marshealthyliving.com So we can find out about nutrition from the company that manufactures M&M’s, Snickers, Twix, MilkyWay […]
We’re up to point 9 on the list – and nearing the end – on Bending the Cost Curve in Cancer Care from the May 26 NEJM. The suggestion from Drs. Smith and Hillner is that doctors better integrate palliative care into usual oncology care. The authors start this important section well: We can reduce […]
This morning the FDA announced approval of Zelboraf (vemurafenib) for treatment of some patients advanced melanoma. This is the second drug the agency has approved for this disease in recent months, after nearly two decades of a lack of new or effective therapies for melanoma. Zelboraf is a pill. This small-molecule drug is thought to […]
I’m half-tempted to put down yesterday’s new NYT Magazine feature on crazy sexy cancer goddess Kris Carr. Her blog was one of the first I found when I started ML, and it was the most popular link on my fledgling site until I pulled it, fearful of somehow sponsoring a too-alternative oncology perspective. But I […]
There’s so much weird and exciting cancer news this week, it’s hard to keep up! Double-kudos to Andrew Pollack on his front-page and careful coverage in the New York Times of the hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (Hipec) technique that’s being used at some name-brand health care facilities to treat colon cancer. First, he spares no detail […]
We’ve reached what may be my favorite of the proposed ways to reduce cancer care costs, published in the NEJM by Drs. Smith and Hillner. Idea Number 8 is to realign compensation to value cognitive services, rather than chemotherapy, more highly. What the authors are saying is that we’d save money if oncologists were paid more for […]
