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.
My fingers stopped this morning for a while when I came upon a reference to @whymommy. Last thing I read about her condition, she was at home having a tough but cozy Thanksgiving at home. Now she’s in the hospital and in her words, OK. Susan is a woman in her 30s with metastatic breast […]
On Friday I visited the Scar Project exhibit at Openhouse, on Mulberry Street just south of Spring. Photographer David Jay offers penetrating, large, wall-mounted images of young people with breast cancer. The photos reveal women who’ve have had surgery, radiation, reconstruction or partial reconstruction of the breasts. Some are strikingly beautiful. Some appear confused, others […]
Few BC news items irk some women I know more than those linking alcohol consumption to the Disease. Joy-draining results like those reported this week serve up a double-whammy of guilt: first – that you might have developed cancer because you drank a bit, or a lot, or however much defines more than you should have imbibed; and second – now that […]
The Metastatic Breast Cancer Network held its fifth annual meeting in Baltimore over this past weekend. Most of the nearly 300 registrants were women living with MBC. The lively group of women coalesced in the face of unexpected, pre-seasonal wintry weather. At an evening reception they stood, sat, waited for drinks and lined up for […]
Some of the more understandable discussion comes from women with metastatic disease whose tumors were missed by screening mammography. Notably, neither paper quotes an oncologist.
More, a magazine “for women of style & substance,” has an unusually thorough, now-available article by Nancy F. Smith in its September issue on A Breast Cancer You May Not Need to Treat. The article’s subject is DCIS (Ductal Carcinoma in Situ). This non-invasive, “Stage O” malignancy of the breast has shot up in reported incidence […]
Today marks 9 years, exactly, since Dr. L. gave me the Call. It was a Wednesday afternoon. I was in clinic, caring for patients with blood diseases. In between seeing my patients and supervising the residents and fellows, I checked my voice mail. The message from Dr. L. said I should please contact her. Already, by […]
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 […]
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 […]
This afternoon Ed Silverman of Pharmalot reports that Roche has proposed a compromise to the FDA over Avastin’s use in women with metastatic breast cancer. The drug would be approved for use only in combination with paclitaxel (Taxol), for which the data are strongest, and with special warnings. He writes: The deal includes revised labeling […]
My cousin testified before the FDA oncology advisory board on Tuesday about her experience taking Avastin. This is a tragedy, to deny the only drug that is keeping a 51 year old woman alive. You have to wonder, are the advisory panel members so rational in all their behavior and choices? Are they always so […]
This week the FDA approved a new assay for Her2 expression in breast cancer biopsies. The technology, Inform Dual ISH, is manufactured by Ventana Medical Systems, a Roche subsidiary. Inform Dual ISH works like this: technicians, typically working under the supervision of a pathologist, expose a tiny bit of a breast biopsy specimen, fixed on […]
I’m minding the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology from a distance this year. So far, the big breast cancer story syncs with a NEJM paper published yesterday on-line, on the use of exemestane (brand name: Aromasin, manufactured by Pfizer) to prevent invasive breast cancer. These patent-protected pills block the body’s normal […]
When I was a medical resident in the late 1980s, we treated some patients with pancreatic cancer on a regimen nick-named the coffee protocol because it included infusions of intravenous caffeine. How absurd, we thought back then, because years earlier caffeine had been linked to pancreatic cancer as a possible cause. Now, two new studies […]
In my inbox this morning, via ASCO‘s “Cancer in the News” feed: The UK’s Telegraph (5/6, Beckford) reported that as “many as 20,000 British women could avoid developing” breast cancer “each year, if they took more exercise, drank less and ate better.” Latest figures “suggest that 47,600 women developed breast cancer in 2008,” and the […]
A recent audit of nine NYC’s Health and Hospitals Corporation found City Comptroller Liu described as dangerous delays in women’s health care. It takes too long for women to get screening and diagnostic mammograms. The 2009 audit found women at Elmhurst Hospital had the longest waits – 50 working days (that would be 10 weeks, […]
The American Society of Breast Surgeons held its 2011 annual meeting in D.C. from April 27 – May 1. Among the papers presented was Abstract #1754: “Mammography in 40 Year Old Women: The Potential Impact of the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) Mammography Guidelines.” You can find the press release, followed by the abstract, […]
This week a paper came out in JAMA showing a surprising reduction in breast cancer cases among women who had hysterectomies and then took Premarin, an estrogen-only remedy compounded from steroids in horses’ urine. The research merits attention because it’s part of the Women’s Health Initiative and is well-done by several measures: The study is […]
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 […]
A new report was published on-line this afternoon by the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). It covers a Phase III (randomized) clinical trial of Avastin (Bevacizumab) in women with metastatic BC. Over 1200 patients were included in the analysis, all with Her2 negative disease. The design of the randomized study protocol was a bit unusual, […]
