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.
Today the author fears she is suffering from breast cancer fatigue syndrome, an unofficial and possibly infectious condition that she named this morning, that comes from too much thinking about breast cancer and the incidence of which peaks in October, and/or that she may be suffering from writing-about-breast-cancer fatigue syndrome, an affliction of some bloggers. […]
Why am I blogging about this drug, a pill, that works imperfectly in perhaps most of 5% of non-small-cell lung cancer patients and, maybe, in some other rare tumors? Because this is the future of oncology and, ultimately I think, will provide cost-effective medicine that’s based in evidence and science. The key is that the investigators tried the experimental drug in lung cancer patients with a specific genetic profile, one that predicts a response to this agent…
How drugs like crizotinib could save money: 1. This drug is a pill; slash the costs of IVs, pumps, bags of saline, nurses to administer…2. Don’t give it to patients without a relevant genetic mutation; 3. Monitor patients for resistance and stop giving drugs when they no longer help the individuals for whom their prescribed.
The Santiago Times reports that the rescued Chilean miners donned suits and pink ribbons, the latter in honor of breast cancer awareness month, at a ceremony at the the presidential palace, la Moneda. Sure, the pink scene’s getting to be a bit much around here. But I don’t belittle this gesture; the miners’ intentions are […]
The cover of the November print edition of Wired features large, unnatural-appearing cleavage. Inside and toward the back of the issue, a curious article ties together stem cells and the future of breast reconstruction. It got my attention. The detailed and admittedly interesting piece, by Sharon Begley, describes what’s science or science fiction: first humans, […]
Dr. John Snow, an anesthesiologist and founder of public health, recognized the mode of cholera’s spread more than 150 years ago in London, where he became famous for mandating the closure of the Broad Street Pump. Snow died at the age of 45, of what was said to be apoplexy, old jargon for a stroke.
In 2009, there were 221,226 cholera cases reported and 4,946 cholera deaths in 45 countries, according to the CDC. Based on information put together by the World Health Organization,
This week the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published results of a large study with significant implications for women who consider taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT). The new findings are based on careful examination over 16,000 individuals, part of the larger Women’s Health Initiative, who were randomly assigned to take either a placebo, […]
The 33 Chilean miners – mainly middle-aged and of modest means – zoomed up in high-tech capsules from the deep, would-be tomb where they’d been waiting for 69 days underground…
The amazing and nearly-too-good-to-be true news is that a top-notch team of engineers, doctors including the NASA/Johnson Space Center Deputy
ML learned a new word upon reading the newspaper: floccinaucinihilipilificationism. According to the New York Times now, Moynihan prided himself on coining the 32-letter mouthful, by which he meant “the futility of making estimates on the accuracy of public data.”
She’s not exactly sure how the term, said to be the longest non-technical word in the English language, might be used in medical communication, but it seems that it might be relevant to estimating health care costs, and – possibly by extrapolation – to understanding the hidden ambiguousness of inferences drawn from vast amounts of seemingly hard data.
Last October, the U.S. Senate (on 10/13/09) and House (retroactively, on 10/28/09) voted to support the designation of October 13, 2009, as a National Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day. The point was to draw public attention to the distinct needs of metastatic BC patients: women who live every day with this condition but, for the most part, are not heralded in pink.
Expertise can make a huge difference in clinical outcomes.
Over 400 Nigerian children have died from lead poisoning this year…lead poisoning is sometimes called plumbism, stemming from plumbum, the Latin term for lead (Pb, atomic number 82), a metal used by plumber. A rarer term is Saturnism, based on the metal’s association with that planet and ancient Roman god.
Pajak, a graduate student at the University of Georgia, merges art and science in a novel way: she composed a new work, the Sounds of HIV, based on the virus’s genetic sequence.
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…
…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:
Dear Readers,
I’ve been on vacation for a few days, in Woods Hole and Boston, Massachusetts. I’m learning about my family.
Have a great weekend
(in the Style of a Magazine Cover)
If patients knew more:
1. they’d understand more of what doctors say;
2. they’d ask better questions;
3. they’d be more autonomous;
4. they’d make better decisions (ones they’re comfortable with, long-term);
5. they’d spend less money on care they don’t want or need.
If doctors knew more…
Am I pro- or con- colonoscopy for routine screening, you might wonder. Well, that depends.
Am I pro- or con- famous singers and other celebrities extolling the benefits of particular medical interventions? Well, that depends, too.
But I’m sure I prefer “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Also “Leaving on a Jet Plane” fills me with imperfect memories of 6th grade.
I didn’t know much about social media until the summer of 2008. Then, I entered Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism as a new student and attended an optional lunch-time session on Facebook, Gmail and Twitter.
My kids used Facebook, so I knew about that. Still, I hesitated…
Family gatherings centered on two things – food, and talk about medicine. We spoke of interesting cases (always nameless), challenging conditions and, even back then, the constraints of health care costs. My fiancé, now husband of over 20 years, couldn’t get over how debate over health care dominated our Rosh Hashanah and Thanksgiving feasts…
…when I learned I had breast cancer, I knew exactly what to do. The decisions, though difficult, were almost straightforward, buttressed by my knowledge and familiarity with the language of medicine…
Well, I went ahead and started this blog without a proper introduction. Why was I in such a hurry?
Because I think the media’s getting – and giving – the wrong message on breast cancer screening. When it comes to long, boring medical publications like those published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, perhaps it’s not the devil that’s in the details so much as are the facts.
More on that tomorrow –
