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Cancer Matters

Perspectives from those who live it every day.





Getting Personal About Personalized Cancer Medicine

I got into this business 25 years ago, when my husband was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.  I was a newlywed, and at 22-years-old, I faced the prospect of being a widow.  The evening we learned the shocking news, I remember leaving the hospital to return home. I was numb with fear.  I went into our bedroom and picked up the T-shirt he had casually dropped on the bed before we left for what we believed would be a brief doctor’s visit.  I didn’t expect to be returning to our home alone. I pressed the shirt to my face and breathed in his scent and sobbed uncontrollably.

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Medicare, The A,B,C,D’s…Let’s Talk D

Louise Knight
Louise Knight, MSW, LCSW-C, OSW-C

You may be confused by the list of letters after the word Medicare.  A, B, C, D...  Who can keep them straight?  There is a web page that can give the answers.  It is www.medicare.gov.

Let's Talk D:  Let me give you the important Medicare D news for 2011.    I am going to start with the letter D and the reason is:  the deadline to apply ends soon.

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Why I Run

As an avid runner, I participate in many races each year.  I enter these for many reasons. I love to run, it’s a challenge, and sometimes it’s for a good cause. At the beginning of each race, I like to look around at the starting line at the wide range of people running the event.  Each participant is running for a different reason. For some, it’s a personal goal, a hobby, or even a response to a challenge.  For many, the race has a special meaning -- it could be in honor or memory of a loved one, in support of a friend or family member, or to simply celebrate life.

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Know Thy Pathologist

When you are facing potentially life-changing treatment or surgery for cancer, you may want to have several opinions from the best surgeons, the most experienced oncologists, and top experts in radiation therapy, right?  Well, there's another expert whose double-checking may be worth your while -- the pathologist. 

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Cancer Caregiving

--The following blog post is Part 2 of a blog series written by Brenda Boitson, a 26 year-old widow, writer, and speaker who resides in Lancaster, Pennyslvania.  Her husband, Kevin, lost his battle to angiosarcoma at the age of 36 on October 28, 2008.  Brenda detailed their journey through his disease at http://www.theboitsons.info and now continues to blog about widowhood at http://www.crazywidow.info.  She advocates locally for sarcoma and grief awareness while working full time and attending school for business.   Read Part 1, posted last week. 

My husband became ill in June 2008 and within just two months he went from having a sore throat, to being on life support and having an emergency esophagectomy at Johns Hopkins.  Our life drastically changed, and that change included a sudden move from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Baltimore, Md.  While Kevin was in full care of the Hopkins staff, I could not bring myself to leave his side.

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Remembering Kevin Boitson

The following blog post was submitted by Brenda Boitson, a 26 year-old widow, writer, and speaker who resides in Lancaster, Pennyslvania.  Her husband, Kevin, lost his battle to angiosarcoma at the age of 36 on October 28, 2008.  Brenda detailed their journey through his disease at http://www.theboitsons.info and now continues to blog about widowhood at http://www.crazywidow.info.  She advocates locally for sarcoma and grief awareness while working full time and attending school for business. 

When I first walked through the doors of Johns Hopkins Hospital, one late night in August 2008, I was uncertain, fearful, and worried beyond belief.  My husband of 1.5 years had arrived just a few minutes before me via emergency ambulance transport.  He was breathing only thanks to life support, and we still had no answers on the undiagnosed cancerous tumor that was growing in his chest.

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CT Scans Reduce Lung Cancer Deaths by 20 Percent

Starting in 2002, more than 50,000 current and former smokers aged 55 to 74 signed up for the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) at Johns Hopkins and more than 30 other sites across the nation.  The trial was to last 10 years, but eight years into the study, leaders of the trial found their results thus far were significant enough to stop the trial and announce their findings.

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