Columns
Category: Breast Cancer
The balance between life and disease
Like many other Americans lately, I’ve found myself thinking hard about – and personally identifying with – the dilemma faced by Elizabeth Edwards and her husband, John, the former senator and would-be president. His career, her health. Not an easy balancing act. Who should sacrifice for whom? How much? Nobody wants to be – or…
How to cope with shock of cancer diagnosis
Late last fall, Dartmouth Medical School researchers reported in the journal Cancer that all newly diagnosed breast cancer patients in their study experienced at least some level of distress, and nearly half met the criteria for a significant psychiatric disorder such as major depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Well, duh! Is it really news that…
Getting Warmer in Bid to Kill Tumors
A year ago, when Gayle Driscoll’s, breast cancer recurred on her skin, the 63-year-old retired teacher from Barnstable tried an experimental treatment that gave her radiation therapy some extra oomph . Every time she lay down for radiation treatment on her chest, her tumors were also heated with a special device that emitted radio frequency…
You’re Getting Sleepy; Could that Stop Cancer?
Melatonin, long known to insomniac Americans as an over-the-counter sleep aid, is now being studied as a way to prevent and treat breast and other cancers. Dubbed the “hormone of darkness,” melatonin is a hormone that is made by the brain’s pineal gland at nighttime. This summer, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital led by…
A Diagnosis Of Cancer Is Trying For Any Marriage
Cancer can be very tough on a marriage just ask Sandro Segalini, 64, of Falmouth. His first wife died of breast cancer 14 years ago. His second wife, Marcia Woltjer, 59, left him earlier this year, three years after her own diagnosis with breast cancer. Segalini, a retired businessman, had been totally willing to take…
Optimism isn’t the cure
Nancy Achin Audesse, 45, knows a thing or two about serious illness and optimism. Audesse, executive director of the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Medicine, has had cancer four times: Hodgkin’s disease when she was 14, the first round of breast cancer at 33, the second bout (which included a relapse of the first,…
New Cancer Therapy Easier on the Patient
Eighty-two year old Marie Desilets lives in Dunstable, about an hour’s drive from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. When she discovered that she needed radiation for breast cancer a year or so ago, she faced a dilemma. She could get regular radiation treatments, which would involve being in Boston 5 days a week for…
Sentinel Node Biopsy – Ready for Prime Time?
Anna Coppinger, 61, a school cafeteria worker from Hingham, lies waiting outside the operating room at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, chatting with her husband and daughters – and wincing whenever she jostled the needle that had been placed in her left breast several hours earlier to guide surgeons to the exact spot where her tumor…
Hopes dim for controversial breast cancer treatment
Convinced by doctors that bone marrow transplantation offered the best chance at survival, thousands of women with breast cancer have agreed to the controversial procedure — despite the lack of proof that it could save, or even prolong, their lives more than standard therapy. Indeed, so many women — about 5,000 women a year —…
Lymphedema finally getting some attention
Marianne Lynnworth, 66, a writer and former geographer, isn’t sure why she got lymphedema, though she thinks a case of frostbite when she was a teenager probably touched off a hereditary tendency to the disease. But she sure does know what a struggle it’s been for the last 52 years. Sometimes, the swelling makes her…
Categories
Aging
Alcohol
Allergies
Alternative Medicine
Anxiety
Breast Cancer
Cancer
Dental
Depression
Exercise/Fitness
General Medicine
Heart Disease
Hormone replacement
Loneliness/Loss
Nutrition
Pain
Sleep Problems
Women's issues