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Kids cured of cancer still have problems
A favorite though sad story of mine that I like to tell my medical students concerns an adolescent I treated for leukemia many years ago. He was extremely bright and was planning a career in...
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Making sense of the new information on breast cancer.
Last week, the cancer news was kind of exciting and broadcast widely. I heard it on the radio, read about it in the newspapers, and saw it on television. A huge consortium of scientists had looked at...
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A small step forward in familial breast cancer
Many years ago I took care of Sally, a close friend who was discovered to have breast cancer. Many of the women in her family had also been diagnosed with this disease, so her diagnosis was no...
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Do vitamins prevent cancer? I doubt it.
Recently the newspapers have been describing the results of a study published in the JAMA (Nov 14, 2012) that shows a reduced cancer rate in men who took multivitamins. This was a carefully designed...
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Small steps in treating prostate cancer
New drugs are beginning to make a dent in the invincibility of metastatic prostate cancer. The basis for these advances began with a professor at my medical school, Charles Huggins. Huggins was awarded...
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More tamoxifen is better!
More tamoxifen is better! When tamoxifen first appeared as a major drug to prevent recurrence in women treated for breast cancer, the major question was how long it should be given. Although it is...
View ArticleIs proton therapy the best kind of radiation for prostate cancer?
My radio alarm goes off early in the morning. Often one of the first ads I hear while I am getting ready to move out of bed is from Loma Linda University Medical Center. They are pushing their proton...
View ArticleMore tamoxifen may be better.
So you have been taking tamoxifen to prevent your breast cancer from coming back and are now approaching the 5-year mark. Time to stop? After all that was the deal your oncologist promised. And, enough...
View ArticleOur most important medical test device for cancer patients – the scale.
Sometimes in my practice, the nursing assistants would forget to take a patient’s temperature or even their pulse or blood pressure. But one test they never failed to do was to weigh the patient....
View ArticleIt always hurts – is there a drug to relieve the pain of neuropathy?
This comment is typical of patients with what we call peripheral neuropathy, another side effect of some chemotherapy drugs. The major drugs that cause this are platinum compounds, taxanes and...
View ArticleAnother cancer we can prevent
Although no one talks about it much, one of the results of the AIDS epidemic has been that there has been an increase in the number of men diagnosed with anal cancer. This cancer arises in the anus,...
View ArticleWhy not try to prevent breast cancer?
Can we do that? The answer is yes! I’ve talked about risk factors for breast cancer that can be lowered. We know that staying slim, exercising, not taking post-menopausal hormones containing...
View ArticleWe can avoid arm swelling after breast cancer surgery – most of the time.
In the “good old days” one of the biggest problems I would encounter in women who had been treated for breast cancer was arm swelling. This problem, called lymphedema, was caused by the extensive...
View ArticleCancer treatment can mess with your brain
We actually have known this for some time, but two recent articles in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute just confirm this. The first involves adults who as children were treated for...
View ArticleIf you have cancer , you may be eligible for Social Security Disability...
There are two programs you may qualify for. These programs are known as 1) Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and 2) Supplemental Security Income (SSI). To qualify for either program, you...
View ArticleHow old do you have to be to avoid radiation therapy after lumpectomy?
When I was in practice, women would often ask if they really needed to get radiation therapy to the breast after lumpectomy. There was no question that for younger women, radiation was important....
View ArticleHow do you know if you have inherited a high risk for breast cancer?
Lately, the news has been full of the story of Angelina Jolie and her bilateral mastectomy. Jolie carried the mutation for breast cancer known as BRCA. There are two BRCA gene mutations, BRCA1 and...
View ArticleMichael Douglas got throat cancer from oral sex. Really?
Guess what. It’s might be true. How can this be? It turns out that about one-third or perhaps more of throat cancers (specifically called oropharyngeal – referring to the back of the mouth and the...
View ArticleHow much is a month of life worth?
This may be a strange question because prices for anything are determined by markets, and there is no market for a month of life – unless it is your life. Then the question is how much would you pay...
View ArticleAbout Spyware
How to get rid of spyware Spyware is put on your computer without you knowing. It is something used to spy on you and you activities on your computer. Spyware is put on your computer without your...
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