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BY KATHY LATOUR | APRIL 4, 2012
On April 12, we are going to have our first ever Facebook chat with Dennis Abbott, DDS, the founder and CEO of Dental Oncology Professionals of North Texas, an oral medicine practice dedicated to meeting the unique dental and oral health needs of patients battling cancer.
I met Dr. Abbott when a former student of mine looked me up to tell me he was doing public relations for a dentist who specialized in oncology. I was intrigued, and it was great to hear from my former student, Norberto, who graduated in the early '90s and had worked tirelessly since then for nonprofit organizations as he worked to make the world a better place. After doing some research with Dr. Abbott and others in the field, we decided to do a story on oncology dentistry and had a big response from our readers. We had a number of readers say something along the lines of "It's about time you talked about dental issues."
My interest came from the fact that I suffered a lot from oral mucositis during chemotherapy.
Oral mucositis is that nasty side effect that causes your mouth to fill with little blisters. My mom used to call them canker sores, and it felt like I had a mouth full of them. The only thing that had any impact on it at all was liquid novacaine, which I kept in my mouth as much as I could. When I tried to eat it was impossible, and talking was out of the question, which for me was really hard. I couldn't sleep because I had to spit out the novacaine, and I would wake myself up and not be able to go back to sleep.
When talking to Dr. Abbott about mucositis before the story, he told me about how he treats it now and just the compassion in his voice made me feel that today's cancer patients were getting lots of care that we didn't get in the '80s when they didn't know what to do other than try to kill the pain.
Some patients face losing their teeth and others have bad teeth going into treatment, which can impact their health directly.
To participate inCURE 's Facebook chat and to hear what Dr. Abbott has to say join us on April 12 at 12 p.m. CT (1 p.m. ET/ 10 a.m. PT). You can RSVP for the event here.
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BY KATHY LATOUR | MARCH 22, 2011
As a child I recall my mother telling me I needed to brush my hair 100 strokes a night to keep it beautiful. Hair is a woman's crowning glory, she would say as I diligently brushed away. When I finished I looked at my limp, fine, thin dishwater blonde hair and wondered who got my crown.
You can't know how connected you are to your hair until you lose it. We look at it every day in the mirror as it frames our face. We cut, dye, brush, grow and usually dislike what God gave us, wishing it was straight when curly or curly when straight or blonde when brown or red when blonde.
Then we learn we will lose it and, for many of us, it means losing a part of who we are when it goes.
I had terrible side effects from chemotherapy after my diagnosis in 1986 at age 37. This was before anti-emetics, and I vomited until they thought they would have to hospitalize me. I had the worst case of oral mucoscitis (mouth sores) they had ever seen and, in general, felt like I was dying for about a week between treatments. I felt better just in time to get blasted again. Because I had such bad side effects, I was sure the universe would spare me hair loss. But it was not to be.
Shaving my head had to be one of the worst days of my life. First, the wigs back then were really bad, and I hated wearing one. It itched. I am also one of those who likes to scratch, run fingers and in other ways use my hair as a prop when writing. I considered just going bald, but there was no way being bald was in any way cool in 1986. And I learned the hard way that ripping the wig off in the car may have felt good but caused lots of consternation among fellow travelers as they swerved and honked at my bald head.
One friend in my support group wore scarves tied in the most fashionable ways. She was a buyer for a major department store and found a way to be stylish without a wig. But if you don't have that little indent at the back of your skull, there is no way to keep a scarf from sliding off, as I learned after spending a fortune on scarves.
Mostly I hated the wig because it was a constant reminder that I had cancer. Every time I passed a mirror and jumped at the stranger in the reflection, I was reminded.
I stopped wearing my wig when my hair was about 1/8th of an inch long. I was still bald, but had stopped caring at that point. Summer was coming and there was no way I was wearing a wig in Texas in the summer.
I have to admit I was surprised to learn that some women are so attached to their hair that they refuse treatment. I wonder if those women are like my friend Ann. She had a bad cancer, was treated and grew back her long, thick, dark hair. When the cancer came back she decided against treatment, in part because she didn't want to lose her hair again. It made her feel not herself to be without her hair. We tried to talk her out of it, but she had also been told that the few options she had didn't promise much hope for a second remission. Still, I wish she had tried. No head of hair is worth your life if there is even the smallest chance.
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BY KATHY LATOUR | DECEMBER 13, 2010
One of my goals for this year's SABCS was to get a sense of where we are from those who have been coming to this meeting for a number of years.
The result was somewhat predictable in that the physicians see more progress than the advocate/survivors – except perhaps for those survivors who have benefited from one or more of the findings in the treatment area over the past 10 years.
Overall, the physicians see progress in diagnostics and treatment - two areas summed up by Debu Tripathy, MD, professor of medicine and co-leader of the Women's Cancer Program at the University of Southern California Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, and John Pippen, MD, a medical oncologist at Baylor Sammons Cancer Center in Dallas.
Tripathy, who is also editor-in-chief of CURE, has not missed a meeting since 1989 when he began attending as a fellow.
"Many things have happened that have made an impact," he says. "There has been progress, definitely more than in the preceding 20 years. In the last few years, we have two drugs for prevention that have been approved and better imaging techniques - neither perfect but progress. We have shown that preventive surgery helps women with the BRCA1 and 2 mutations. We have approved new treatments in the adjuvant setting that improved outcomes: taxanes, dose-dense therapy and Herceptin for HER2-positive cancers. These have lowered the risk of recurrence to only 10 to 15 percent - half of what it used to be. 0ur biggest challenge is still metastatic cancer."
John Pippen, who has been attending for 15 years, points to molecular information as the greatest breakthrough.
"The last two or three years, I have come away feeling much more positive. The era of molecular medicine means being able to look at a tumor ahead of time to maximize the effectiveness of treatment. This minimizes toxicity and cost."
On the other side, Susan Love, MD, was pessimistic about the meeting, wishing more of the research looked at the causes of the disease and how to stop it.
"We are stuck in trying to make the treatments the best we can instead of finding the cause and stopping it," she says.
Love's sentiment was voiced by many of the advocates, who are asking for information about prevention for the next generation when their daughters may face the risk of developing breast cancer.
But as Dr. Tripathy points out, it's at SABCS where all the disciplines come together to learn from each other in hopes of going home with new ideas about ways to end this disease.
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BY KATHY LATOUR | DECEMBER 12, 2010
One of my favorite things about covering advocacy at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is that I get to see old friends.
Many of you will remember Brenda Hutchison from 2007's and 2008's profiles. Brenda was diagnosed in 2003 with HER2-positive breast cancer at age 44 and has traveled the difficult path of brain mets, which one-third of HER2 patients experience.
At the beginning she did standard chemo. Then when brain mets showed up in 2007 she began Tykerb and Xeloda and got a total response, and by October of that year her scans were clear. Over the next 18 months, it was a matter of the brain spots going to sleep, being dormant and then waking up. Each time there was IMRT stereotactic targeted radiation to zap them with.
The year 2008 brought old spots back to life and a new regimen, and when we met at SABCS in 2008 her new scans had just come back; no cancer was visible.
Each year Brenda has attended SABCS on behalf of the HER2 Support Group. Her voice and journey have become a strong message for other HER2-positive women.
At Thursday's Hot Topics session, Brenda slipped into the chair next to me, and we had one of those wonderful moments of reconnection. In that one moment, I knew we were making progress in treating women with metastatic breast cancer because Brenda was well and happy. She later filled me in the latest chapter of her life.
This year Brenda was stable until April when her tumor markers went up and scans showed a new spot on her adrenal gland and a node in the chest area. Radiation took care of the mediastinal chest spot, and she switched from one aromatase inhibitor to another. Her oncologist said it was time to look for another systemic therapy.
Luckily her timing could not have been better because since early this year a new drug, T-DM1, has been in clinical trials for women with HER2-positive breast cancer. T-DM1 is actually what is being called a super version of Herceptin because it combines Herceptin (the T is for trastuzumab) with a new compound DM1. Results of trials released at SABCS confirmed that this was the drug for her.
Because the drug has not been approved by the FDA, Brenda began the very tedious work of trying to be accepted for compassionate use of T-DM1. That effort has become a full-time job for the past few months as she jumps through the hoops required for admission, but she is hoping she will be accepted soon, in part because of some very positive discussions at SABCS. In fact, she is well-known now among the researchers at SABCS as "the woman from Austin."
Despite the energy it has taken to make the compassionate use happen, Brenda's energy is good. She and her husband continue to travel, going to Europe last winter, and she continues to work as much as her disability will allow.
And she remains a beacon of hope to other women who need inspiration and proof that life can be lived fully no matter the diagnosis.
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