Elie Wiesel's Night, a harrowing story of survival, offers lessons about Healthy Survivorship,
Read moreShould Your Physician Confide if She Just Lost a Patient?
Your physician is running late, because she’s composing herself before entering the exam room where you’re waiting. If, understandably, she’s not her usual bubbly self, should she confide that she just lost a patient?
Read moreWhy Realistic Hopes are Healing
You could argue that false hope makes patients feel good and stirs the same placebo effect as realistic hope. Those are both healing benefits. Why my insistence that Healthy Survivors nourish realistic hope?
Read moreHope that Works
"...hope, to provide what it can and should, needs to be tied to reality." That's the line that prompted me to share
Read moreHappy Despite My Brain Cancer Diagnosis
Journalist Jeffrey Weiss offers testimony to the benefits of "hopeful acceptance"--accepting a poor prognosis while hoping for the best possible outcome.
Read moreA Risk of Empowering Patients--Part III
Patient empowerment is intended to help patients. Like any power, it can harm. Patients may suffer untoward consequences if through their efforts to get good care...
Read moreA Risk of Empowering Patients--Part II
Not all patients embrace the idea of patient empowerment. In particular, some patients don't want to be actively involved in their treatment decisions. Others don't want to hear lists of things they should be doing to optimize their outcome. Why?
Read moreA Risk of Empowering Patients
In response to Miller's editorial intended to empower patients, a reader said, "the lingering feeling is we are to blame [if the cancer recurs]...it's all our own fault."
Read moreLaura Miller's Epiphanies and Regrets While Dealing with Cancer Again--Part II
In my last post I shared two of Miller's epiphanies. Here's more:
Read moreLaura Miller's Epiphanies and Regrets While Dealing with Cancer Again - Part I
Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller wrote a smart and powerful editorial, with hope that "Perhaps some of what I've done (and, unfortunately, haven't done) can help others."
Read moreMaking the Best Medical Decisions - Part III
Are you a believer or a doubter, when it comes to modern medicine?
Read moreMaking the Best Medical Decisions - Part II
To make wise medical decisions, you need to know whether you are a believer in modern medicine or a doubter.
Read moreMaking the Best Medical Decisions
Making the best medical decisions for you is vital to Healthy Survivorship, and not only because doing so optimizes your chance of the best outcome. If you end up with a disappointing treatment result, your prior decisions affect--and may determine--your happiness....
Read moreSelf-Advocacy and Healthy Survivorship
The National Breast Cancer Foundation just published my guest blog post on self-advocacy, in which I explained how "The first time I heard that term in a medical context it conjured images of clench-fisted activists picketing in front of hospitals, demanding better care. Actually, self-advocacy is simply the act of....
Read moreMessage to Clinicians about Minor Symptoms
Capping off my posts about the challenges of minor symptoms, here's an excerpt How to Address Minor Symptoms in Long-term Survivors, an essay for clinicians.
If asked for a challenging topic in oncology, I doubt you'd answer “minor symptoms in long-term survivors”....
Read moreWeb-based App Improves Survival--Part II
How can an app improve cancer survival? My last post discussed an ASCO Post article about the first randomized trial to show improvement in cancer survival with Web-mediated follow-up versus standard office-visit follow-up....
Read moreWeb-based App May Help Improve Survival
What if an app could help improve (1) patients' survival, (2) patients' quality of life and (3) the cost effectiveness of cancer care?
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