Category: Experts Speak - Part 3
Reducing Prostate Cancer Risk: Good News, Bad News, or No New News?
Prostate cancer is an important disease; in fact, it’s the most common internal malignancy in American men. Prostate cancer is a variable disease; many cases are slow growing, even harmless, but some cases are aggressive and even lethal. And it’s a puzzling disease; some cases are passed down from father to son, but most occur…
Radiation Fibrosis Syndrome: What It Is and How to Treat It
Radiation therapy, like surgery and chemotherapy, is a mainstay of cancer treatment. The reason radiation is used to treat cancer is that it is usually toxic to the fast growing cancer cells while supposedly having little adverse effects on the slow growing and relatively radiation resistant normal body cells. Unfortunately, normal cells are often affected…
Living with Cancer-Related Sexuality Changes
As cancer survival rates increase, more attention is being paid to quality-of-life issues such as sexuality. Initially you may be concerned about lifestyle changes or limitations from cancer and do not focus on sexuality issues until you are resuming your life. Treatments and/or the disease itself can cause changes in sexuality, but health care providers…
Tomorrow’s Pain
It was the size of the needle that made the biggest impression on me. Cindy Sanderson, a clinical psychologist in her mid-40s, was delivering a lecture to the psychiatry service of the cancer hospital where I was training. She didn’t offer the usual research on this or that psychiatric issue; instead, Sanderson described coping with…
Psychological Challenges of Surviving Cancer
About 11 million Americans alive today — one in 30 people — are either currently undergoing treatment for cancer or have done so in the past. The National Cancer Institute considers all to be cancer survivors. Many would attest that cancer is not only life-threatening, but also life-altering.Cancer and its treatment sometimes leave scars and…
What Do You Say to A Breast Cancer Husband? “Shut Up and Listen!”
Editors’ Note: Marc Silver is a big believer in the breast cancer husband’s motto: “Shut up and listen.” Marc’s wife, Marsha Dale, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001. Today, Marsha is in good health. Marc was a typical clueless husband, and he went looking for a book to help him out. When he couldn’t…