Words of Wisdom for Patients With Liver Cancer

Video

Andrea J. Wilson, president and founder of Blue Faery: The Adrienne Wilson Liver Cancer Association, offers advice for patients with liver cancer. Wilson started the foundation after her younger sister, Adrienne, died of liver cancer.

Andrea J. Wilson, president and founder of Blue Faery: The Adrienne Wilson Liver Cancer Association, offers advice for patients with liver cancer. Wilson started the foundation after her younger sister, Adrienne, died of liver cancer.

First and foremost, Wilson wants patients to know that liver cancer is not their fault. Liver cancer is a “silent killer” and often not diagnosed until the later stages, but regardless of a person’s diagnosis or lifestyle, Wilson emphasized that she wouldn’t wish this disease on anyone. Next, she encouraged people to visit www.bluefaery.org for resources and information on the disease. Third, regardless of how much a patient may love his or her doctor, Wilson noted that everyone should get a second opinion and know all of their possible treatment options. Finally, patients should not wait to look into clinical trials. They should be investigating trials at the beginning of their treatment, rather than the end.

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For patients with cancer, the ongoing chemotherapy shortage may cause some anxiety as they wonder how they will receive their drugs. However, measuring drugs “down to the minutiae of the milligrams” helped patients receive the drugs they needed, said Alison Tray. Tray is an advanced oncology certified nurse practitioner and current vice president of ambulatory operations at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Jersey. If patients are concerned about getting their cancer drugs, Tray noted that having “an open conversation” between patients and providers is key. “As a provider and a nurse myself, having that conversation, that reassurance and sharing the information is a two-way conversation,” she said. “So just knowing that we're taking care of you, we're going to make sure that you receive the care that you need is the key takeaway.” In June 2023, many patients were unable to receive certain chemotherapy drugs, such as carboplatin and cisplatin because of an ongoing shortage. By October 2023, experts saw an improvement, although the “ongoing crisis” remained. READ MORE: Patients With Lung Cancer Face Unmet Needs During Drug Shortages “We’re really proud of the work that we could do and achieve that through a critical drug shortage,” Tray said. “None of our patients missed a dose of chemotherapy and we were able to provide that for them.” Tray sat down with CURE® during the 49th Annual Oncology Nursing Society Annual Congress to discuss the ongoing chemo shortage and how patients and care teams approached these challenges. Transcript: Particularly at Hartford HealthCare, when we established this infrastructure, our goal was to make sure that every patient would get the treatment that they need and require, utilizing the data that we have from ASCO guidelines to ensure that we're getting the optimal high-quality standard of care in a timely fashion that we didn't have to delay therapies. So, we were able to do that by going down to the minutiae of the milligrams on hand, particularly when we had a lot of critical drug shortages. So it was really creating that process to really ensure that every patient would get the treatment that they needed. For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.
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