One patient recounts how his oncology nurse's love for healing helped him on his treatment journey.

Oncology Nurses Have A Love for Healing

There is no approved treatment that targets the KRAS p.G12C mutation that drives some cancers like non-small cell lung cancer. But a recent study shows how the experimental drug sotorasib sparked responses in some patients.

Experimental Treatment Shows Promise for Certain Cases of Advanced NSCLC

In this special hematology focused issue of CURE® we look at all the promising treatments and research for both adults and children with blood cancers.

New Therapies for Adults and Children With Blood Cancers Hold Promise

Forward Momentum, a coalition launched by a biopharmaceutical company and three partners, focuses on the health disparities faced by Black men with prostate cancer.

Coalition to Focus on Health Disparities Black Men with Prostate Cancer Face

Articles

From a new study showing that the iCanQuit smoking cessation app is more likely to work than typical guidelines, to the House unanimously passing the Veteran’s Prostate Cancer Treatment and Research Act, here’s what’s happening in the cancer landscape this week. 

Friday Frontline: Smartphone app encourages smoking cessation, House passes Veteran’s Prostate Cancer Treatment and Research Act, and More

Finding the best care team can make all the difference for patients with diseases like multiple myeloma.

Program Leads Patients With Cancer on ‘The Right Track’

Some cancers and treatments can result in cognitive changes that affect thinking, learning, processing or remembering information. These changes can affect many aspects of life such as the ability to work or even to do everyday tasks. Find out whether you have an increased risk of cognitive changes.

Cognitive Changes After Cancer Treatment

Each person responds to treatment differently. No one knows in advance how effective cancer treatment will be. There's also no way to know how long anyone will live—with or without cancer.

Life Expectancy With Cancer

Getting a weekly high dose of chemotherapy for epithelial ovarian cancer did not improve survival outcomes over standard of care for patients with epithelial ovarian cancer, but it was a safe and effective treatment regimen, according to research recently presented at the ESMO Virtual Congress 2020.

“There’s a strong rationale for the evaluation of weekly-dose paclitaxel after settling into the first line of treatment,” Dr. Andrew Clamp, senior lecturer and honorary consultant in medical oncology at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust, said while presenting findings from the ICON8 study.

Study Outcomes For Patients With Epithelial Ovarian Cancer

There were more than 1,500 eligible patients with epithelial ovarian cancer enrolled in the study. They were randomly assigned to one of three treatment arms:

Arm 1: standard chemotherapy consisting of carboplatin AUC5/6 plus paclitaxel 175 mg/m2, both given every three weeks(522 patients)

Arm 2: carboplatin AUC5/6 every three weeks plus paclitaxel 80mg/m2 once a week (523 patients)

Arm 3: carboplatin AUC2 plus paclitaxel 80 mg/m2, both given once a week (521 patients)

Patient characteristics were well balanced among the arms at the start of treatment. The average age of study participants was 62, and 72% had serous disease. Regarding disease stage, 10.5% had stage 1c-2a cancer, 18% had stage 2a-3b and 71% had stage 3c-4. Half (50%) of patients planned delayed primary surgery, while slightly less (48%) underwent immediate primary surgery. Two percent of patients had inoperable disease.

The average overall survival (OS), meaning the total percentage of patients alive on Oct. 1, 2019, was 47.4, 54.1 and 53.4 months in arms 1, 2 and 3, respectively. There were 319 deaths in arm 1 (61%), 300 deaths in arm 2 (57%) and 304 deaths in arm 3 (58%). The difference in survival was not statistically significant between the dose-dense arm and the other two.

Average time to disease progression was 25, 25.5 and 25.9 months in arms 1, 2 and 3, respectively, again showing no statistically significant difference between the arms.

However, the high-dose regimen did have an acceptable side-effect profile, Clamp explained. The side effects associated with the regimens have not changed since researchers analyzed them in 2017.

“The two weekly treatment arms were associated with an increased incidence of any grade 3 or 4 events during treatment,” predominantly driven by neutropenia, a blood count deficiency, Clamp said. “Reassuringly, incidence of febrile neutropenia was low in all three treatment arms, and we did not see any increase of grade 2 or more sensory neuropathy (tingling or numbness in the extremities) in the two weekly dose-dense paclitaxel-containing regimens.”

While there was no major difference in patient characteristics between the treatment groups, Clamp explained that further research will look into more distinct subgroups of patients with ovarian cancer to see if the dose-dense regimen has different survival rates.

“Other further hypothesis-generating analyses are underway in our delayed primary surgery cohort to determine if there is a subgroup of patients who may benefit with the more dense approach,” Clamp said.

A weekly high dose of chemotherapy did not improve survival for patients with epithelial ovarian cancer, though the treatment regimen was effective and well-tolerated. 

Dose-Dense Chemo Regimen No Better Than Standard of Care for Epithelial Ovarian Cancer

As well as being a cancer blogger, Laura Yeager is a religious essayist and a mental health blogger. A graduate of The Writers’ Workshop at The University of Iowa, she teaches writing at Kent State University and Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Laura survived cancer twice.

I was attempting not to think about the possibility of more cancer, but a cleaning spree during the pandemic made it hard to ignore.

For two months, I went about my life without my breast prosthesis. I had lost it, and my insurance paid for only one a year. It really didn’t matter, because my special cancer bras had firm cups, and when I wore them, I hardly needed the little prosthesis that fit on the one side of my bra. I looked fine. Plus, this was during the pandemic, and everyone had a pass in the “looks” department. My prosthesis was simply gone, and I thought I’d never find it again.

A key aspect about blogging about your cancer life is that you “sign” an unwritten contract to be honest. For this reason, I am going to admit that I am a cancer survivor slob. I’m messy. So, it will come as no surprise to you that I hadn’t decluttered our bedroom since the pandemic hit. That was in March, in case you forgot. Our bedroom, the one that I share with my dear husband who has suffered through two bouts of my cancer with me, was a bit nest-like. In fact, I liked to call it “the rat’s nest.” Piles of clothes sat on the floor. My sock basket was overflowing with unmatched socks. Good dresses and suits had slipped off the hangers in the closet and were lying on the ground. A pile of magazines lay next to my bed, where I’d tossed each one after I’d finished reading it.

But then, something changed. Recently, I went back to teaching writing at the local university, albeit remotely, and something about that activity interrupted the malaise I’d felt since COVID-19 began. Suddenly, I felt like cleaning. I couldn’t possibly do it in the daytime, so at about 8:30 on a Friday night, I tackled my mess.

In my cleaning that night, I found so many things that I hadn’t seen in six months. I found my burgundy, long-sleeved blouse with the bell sleeves; I found my nightgown that said, “Due to unfortunate circumstances, I am awake.” And, wait for it: I found my breast prosthesis. It was under a pile of clothing next to my dresser.

I was glad to have it back. I wore it then. It made me feel more put together and respectable.

However, it was hard to ignore the fact that, underneath it, was a bright purple lesion that my oncologist was following. I’d had the ugly spot for two weeks. She wanted me to inform her on Tuesday if it was gone. If it hadn’t disappeared, she was going to biopsy it.

It was probably nothing. I’d had so many false alarms that I was not worried about this one. I felt a bit like a cat with nine lives — a cat in a prosthesis who was hoping she had one or two of those lives left.

One week later, the saga continued: they wanted to biopsy the lesion.

I asked my oncologist’s assistant what the lesion looked like, and she said, “It looks like a pimple, but it’s purple.”

“No, we investigate unusual lesions on folks who’ve had cancer issues before. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

So, the punch biopsy was Thursday, and there were more days of uncertainty ahead.

The biopsy went swimmingly. It didn’t even hurt. My mother had been watching Mass on television and praying for me, and we were convinced this was why I had no pain.

At that point, I had a couple of stitches in my breast. Those would come out in about a week, but I would learn my fate in the next few days. I was not too stressed, just extra tired. I’d feel much better when I knew definitively that the cancer hadn’t come back.

There was a lot to do to keep my mind off cancer. We celebrated my son’s 16th birthday. I received a set of 38 papers to grade. I taught remote classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, signing on happily, as if nothing was happening. I wondered if I would need to quit teaching if I got cancer again, cancer for the third time.

Can you say “nightmare?” Did I have cancer? Didn’t I have cancer? I couldn’t get through to the people at the breast cancer center to tell me what was going on. It was 10:00 a.m. on the day I expected results, and they were still not picking up their phone. I kept getting their answering service. Finally, an operator took pity on me and transferred me to a secretary who was privy to my information. She checked my file. “No, still in process,” she said. It looked like I had to wait another day.

The next day, I called again and got the answering service. It was 9:10 a.m. But the operator finally figured out the problem. I was calling the answering service phone number, not the number of the cancer center. She gave me the right number, and I quickly dialed it. I reached Karen, the woman with the info. She checked my file again. “Benign,” she said. “It’s a benign inclusion cyst.”

I went thrift shopping to celebrate, picking up a SpongeBob Christmas ornament for my kid and a pair of shoes for my mom. As I was driving home, my oncologist called, all bubbly and happy. “I’ve got good news,” she said. I hated to tell her she was a little late. “It’s a benign inclusion cyst.”

“I talked to Karen a few minutes ago,” I said. “But this is great news!” I was trying to sound as elated as my doctor, but I’d had too many near-cancer misses, and this was just another one to add to my list. “Thanks for letting me know, Mary.”

“We’ll see you soon to remove the stitches,” she said.

Driving home, the sky did look a bit brighter, and somehow I was not as weary as I had been.

For one survivor, finding a lost breast prosthesis coincided with another cancer scare. 

Clearing Away Clutter — and the Fear of Another Cancer

As CEO of Myovant Sciences, the biopharmaceutical company developing the novel hormonal treatment relugolix for men with advanced prostate cancer, Seely knows that the disease occurs more often in Black men than it does in White men, killing them at a higher rate.

She also knows that the COVID-19 pandemic has created barriers for all men with prostate cancer because social distancing has closed many of the places they go for information and support. Compounding this problem is the fact that COVID-19 and its complications have disproportionately affected the Black community.

For those reasons, Myovant Sciences teamed up with three other organizations to form Forward Momentum, a men’s health coalition with the goal of improving the lives of patients with prostate cancer.

“Our men’s health program is really focused on health disparities and, in particular, African American men,” Seely said. “Oftentimes, they’re not adequately studied, they’re not adequately researched, and they have worse outcomes or more aggressive prostate cancer, but a lot of that is because they don’t have the same access to care and the same awareness, or they come in later for treatment. We’re trying to get them much more involved in research, so we get more information about them — ideally, so they get better health care.”

Myovant’s collaborators are BlackDoctor.org, a consumer website that shares health and wellness news with the Black community and helps readers find doctors who are likely to be culturally sensitive based on interviews or the populations they treat; patient advocacy group Movember, which is dedicated to reducing the rate of premature death among men from prostate cancer, testicular cancer and suicide; and Evidation Health, which conducts research on inventive methods of capturing, quantifying and analyzing health data.

An initial project will study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in a group of people representative of the racial makeup of America and the men affected by prostate cancer. The COVID-19 Experience study, conducted in collaboration with Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, will measure the effects of the pandemic on men’s mental health over the course of five months.

BlackDoctor.org and Evidation Health also are including a focus on men with prostate cancer
in the study to measure how these patients are coping with the pandemic’s effects. The study’s results will be shared so that the public understands how the pandemic is affecting diverse people across the United States.

Men can check their eligibility for the study, and sign up, at forwardmomentum.com.

“Representation truly matters in studies of all kinds,” Christine Lemke, president and co-founder of Evidation Health, said. “It’s especially critical for diverse voices to be heard and counted given the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. We’ve designed our study to lower the barriers to participation and capture our collective lived experience of the pandemic.”

Simultaneously, the coalition will work to develop digital tools that empower men to better understand and manage their prostate cancer journeys, including their mental and physical health. This will be accomplished through Movember’s True North website (truenth.org/en-us), which provides information and resources to improve the quality of life and care for men with prostate cancer and their families. Improving access to accurate tools for tracking mental and
physical health, such as wearables, will be part of this effort, as well as learning more about the healthcare-related challenges and opportunities for men during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our True North platform is designed to help men navigate their prostate cancer journey, beyond the cancer itself,” said Sam Gledhill, global director of digital health at Movember. “We

are committed to creating innovative tools and resources that can help men track their health and talk about their experiences with the disease, which can impact all dimensions of their lives. We are confident that through partnership we can accelerate this mission.”

Those concerns dovetail with Myovant’s motivation for starting the coalition.

“We are a life sciences company, but it’s very important to us to actually engage with the communities that we serve to help elevate health care,” Seely said. “We like to do this
in what we hope are creative and new ways, and to bring together different organizations that approach problems from very different perspectives to make a major impact in health care. It’s so important to us because there are many who are getting left behind and don’t have access to care.”

The ultimate goal is “to educate the patient and get him back in the center of the conversation,” she said, “so that he is comfortable talking about these problems and getting the help from a health care provider that he needs.”

But when dealing with an underserved group of patients, securing participation can be easier said than done, and it will be up to BlackDoctor.org to pave the way. CEO Reggie Ware is thinking about how to meet that challenge as his organization takes on the task of recruiting patients for the COVID-19 Experience study.

“The patient journey is different for our audience,” Ware said. “The biggest difference is the question of: ‘Can we trust the doctor, or not?’ The other piece that’s really big is that we did a study on our site, and it showed that only 10% of our audience feel that they will be treated fairly in the health care system. If a person doesn’t feel that they’re going to get a positive outcome, they’re less likely to go to the doctor.”

Distrust of the health system among Black patients dates in part back to the 1932-1972 study of untreated syphilis in black men, conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service and the Tuskegee Institute, Ware said. Participating men were not given the opportunity to provide informed consent or given adequate treatment to cure their illness, even when penicillin became the standard of care in 1947, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I’ve never run into a Black person who didn’t know about the Tuskegee experiment,” Ware said.

That has had a chilling effect on Black participation in clinical trials, he said, and is something Forward Momentum is committed to overcoming as it recruits men to be part of its study.

“Oftentimes, when there’s research done across the country, there’s super-low representation of our audience — Black or brown people — and so we’re recruiting minorities for the study,” Ware said. “This is going to be one of the first times in the country’s history that there’s a group of patients in a study who are representative of what this country looks like.”

Seely said she has high hopes that Black patients will participate because the study will seek information rather than offering medical care. She expects the project to be a good way to create comfort with the trial process. Along the way, researchers are likely to learn that members of the Black community have had some concerns in common during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ware said.


Relatively few Black people have jobs that allow them to work from home, he said, “so our message isn’t ‘Work from home,’ but ‘How do you stay safe when you still have to go to work every day?’”

He added that, based on recent research by BlackDoctor. org, 50% of the organization’s audience members expect to refuse a COVID-19 vaccine, while another 20% will have serious reservations about being vaccinated. “We’re brainstorming ways to turn that around,” he said.

Ware praised Myovant and Seely for putting the coalition together.

“They understand that if you bring people to the table and you have meaningful conversations, then it’s going to go well,” he said, “and people are going to look at you differently than the rest of the market, which pretty much just takes your existence for granted. They’re a beacon of light in an industry that I think could use some light.”

He added that, “Once we get everybody to take the vaccine, I think that there are going to be some pretty powerful changes and opportunities for us to come together and really work on health equity and health disparities and really afford some meaningful partnership. I’m hoping that this becomes the first of many partnerships that are going to help people manage their lives.”

Hi, my name is Hallie Bea Barnard. I have been sick with Diamond-Blackfan anemia my whole life, waiting for my bone marrow match, and more recently found out I have cancer in my thighbone.

Last November, I was admitted to the Cook Children’s Health Care System (don’t worry — they don’t really cook children!) for my bone marrow transplant. Before I was admitted, I told my bone marrow transplant doctor, Dr. (Gretchen) Eames, that I wanted to grow up and become a doctor but that I didn’t know if I could do it, because I don’t have a good bedside manner. 

When my brother fell off the stool at our house, there was so much blood, I told him he was going to die. But Dr. Eames said that I would meet so many doctors and nurses, learn from them, and take what I liked the most from each of them. She was right.

I spent 60 days in isolation. I had only my mom, dad, granny, and aunts Micki and Brandi to visit me. The doctors and nurses who worked with me became my friends and family. My most favorite nurse is McKenzie Siegmund, B.S.N., RN. She is nice, beautiful, smart and funny. But what I really like is that she is my friend, and she listens to me and helps me. 

When I got my chemotherapy, I had really bad mucositis and I couldn’t swallow at all. I had an NG (nasogastric) tube placed for 30 days because I couldn’t eat. Nurse McKenzie told me that she believed in me so much and knew that I could do it.

She taught me how to swallow. She encouraged me to be my best and try my hardest, and she believed in me so much that I started to believe in myself. I don’t want to be a doctor anymore; I want to be a nurse — a nurse just like McKenzie, so I can help children who are sick and I can believe in them the way she believed in me. I also think that nurses should get paid more than doctors, but that is a different essay.

Oncology nurses have the power to heal, and in many cases, the power to inspire their patients no matter their age.

Why I Want to Be A Nurse

Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer Overview

Receiving a Prostate Cancer Diagnosis

Prostate Cancer: Learning About Treatment Options

Testing for Mutations in Prostate Cancer

Talking About Gene Testing in Prostate Cancer

John Litten: Participating on a PARP Clinical Trial for mCRPC

Treatment Options Available for mCRPC

Videos

PARP Inhibition in Recurrent Prostate Cancer

When we meet someone for the first time, the encounter has the power and visual equivalent of a poem, a painting or a song. Life is full of these events that seem random. Instead, they are highly symbolic and meaningful.

Just as a river’s confluences, life’s confluences happen in everyone’s life traveling from some strange places, moving constantly and bumping into our side. As the years pass, they keep reproducing and taking forms of encounters, coincidences or occurrences. I have been blessed with these wonderful invisible connections; we are all spiritually linked.

I have been snowed under with cancer for many years. Consciously, I avoided talking “about it”. Later, when I intended to convey my feelings, my mind was limited to deep brown somber holes. Despite trying to connect with others, my melancholy prevailed.

The liberation came when I had an enlightened encounter with Pamela Worrell-Black, a superb social worker with Fairfax Inova Hospital, who begged me to attend a free retreat offered by a nonprofit organization for breast cancer survivors called Casting for Recovery. I bluntly rejected the idea because I was determined to leave behind everything that had to do with cancer.

However, Pamela’s persuasion was stronger than my rebuff. She described the positive effects of that retreat. Finally, I accepted that someone from the organization would call me and then my second marvelous encounter emerged … enter Carol Stevenson. She is one of the sweetest and kindest volunteer-leaders of Casting for Recovery. Carol — who is also a survivor — talked to me for an hour and a half on the phone. She was so caring and compassionate, and I treasured the loving things that she confessed to me.

It all started on a glorious weekend in a locality appropriately called "A Place Apart"; Shrine Mont was formerly a hotel that dates to the 19th Century and now is retreat and conference center located in Orkney Springs, Virginia. The mountains were waiting with undisturbed silence.

I visited this idyllic place supposedly to infuse my dreams, heal my soul and learn how to fly fish, a therapeutic exercise that would help to minimize the effects of the radiation and chemotherapy received and to prevent and protect from lymphedema, a side effect of breast cancer surgery.

We were just 14 women with a variety of concerns, feelings, reactions, and resentments. To belong to this group, you don’t need a special education or a doctorate. You did not need to have an extraordinary talent nor speak a second language. You could be fat, tall, have curly hair. You could be tan, yellow, Black or white. It did not matter to have a domineering personality or be timid as a bird abandoned in the snow. Here, money or recommendations did not count. The only creepy common denominator was having suffered from breast cancer.

At the retreat center, the discussions were very informal. We had a ritual space near the chimney where each one of us guided by counselors redefined our illness, shaped our hopes and, most importantly, strengthened our connections and humanness. Gradually and slowly, we gave ourselves permission to glimpse into our inner strata.

The group (my first ever) ignited great personal transformation. I did a great deal of confessions. I was forever talking; I could not stop telling happy stories and cracking jokes. I was singing and dancing. I reverted into the person that I used to be. Finally, I was able to reconcile with my younger self, the one that left Chile — the same soul that escaped to America because she could not handle the pain of losing her mother to cancer at age of 49. Now, I know that geographical therapy never works.

During the healing sessions, my mind was filled with restorative thoughts and my quest was expanded. It was an incredible experience that enhanced my life. It taught me that individuals, no matter where they are coming from, are universally connected by love, strength, empathy and spirituality.

I had the privilege of being assigned the experienced river guide, Phil Gay, a master casting instructor that has lead CEOs on fishing excursions to some of the most enthralling rivers in the world.

During my training, Phil, instructed me to watch a group of fish that gathered around the one I had caught with his aid. Utterly astonished, I discovered an entire underwater world of fish bonding. The dynamic of camaraderie was developing just before my eyes; a group of fish surrounded the “unfortunate captive” rushing to his side like sharing perhaps some sort of pain or conveying messages. But even more remarkable was this kind of interspecies attachment — a sort of tacit comprehension, a demonstration of solidarity proper of human beings. They narrowed the circle around him soundless and paused. They seemed to understand what was happening and their conduct struck a poignant chord with me as I visualized a funeral.

Attending this healing retreat gave me a profound emotional perspective with a chance of rediscovery. I sensed a deep passion for life; I felt liberated and pampered.

However, in communion with the valuable lived experience and seeking a meaning to all of this, I believe the most outstanding lesson of this journey was the parallel of the social and emotional affiliation between our group of courageous women and the amazing collective cohesion detected amidst the school of fish.

Nora Massignotti-Cortese, is a journalist, artist and workshop facilitator. She can be reached at bertognott@aol.com

Talking about cancer can be a great burden but sharing one’s story can be liberating. Even if you share it while fishing. 

License to Live: How a Fishing Retreat Liberated Me from Cancer

My sister, Mary Schueller, M.S.N., RN-BC, AOCNS, CHPN, is a great example of what it’s like to devote your career to helping others. She truly cares for those in her path and tries to help in whatever way she can. She tirelessly helped our family navigate all the difficult and winding roads when dealing with cancer diagnoses that affected all our lives. Her nonstop efforts helped resolve many of our family’s daily concerns.

In 1994, our father, who was a dairy farmer and vegetable grower in rural Wisconsin, received a diagnosis of multiple myeloma. He underwent numerous rounds of radiation and chemotherapy in a town that was more than 20 miles from the farm he ran with our mother.

They both taught us to be hard workers and support one another, no matter what it was we were going through. Our mother, for the most part, transported him to and from appointments, but it was Mary who immediately gave us other five siblings folders filled with papers and articles to explain the process. Because of her position as an employee of Hospital Sisters Health System, she was able to share a lot of information with us and attend many of our father’s appointments and treatment sessions.

She was very patient with our mother and answered many of our family’s questions when we didn’t understand things. Sadly enough, our father passed away in 1996 under hospice care after numerous attempts at treatments. Then, in the early 2000s, our mother received diagnoses of various medical issues, the last of which was vulvar cancer, and we started the whole cancer journey again. As the one who lived nearest our mother, who had moved to an assisted living facility closer to her doctors and hospitals, Mary ended up responsible for most of her care.

Mary worked tirelessly in her own daily job as an oncology clinical nurse educator, which involved traveling several days a week to another major Wisconsin city through rain, sleet and snow, and then came back to our mother to continue nursing her through all the daily events that are involved in cancer care and treatment.

I honestly can say that I never heard her complain about being the one responsible for our mother’s care. She set up a page on the CaringBridge website so that we would all get updates and could help in small ways, which was so wonderful for those of us who did not live close by. Our mother underwent various radiation, surgical and chemotherapy modalities, which Mary so expertly navigated because of her experience in the field.

Whenever one of us had a question, we posted it on the CaringBridge site, and she would explain it to us in lay terms. I don’t know where we would have all been had Mary not been there to help with all this. Going through this cancer journey for the second time with our other parent was taxing, to say the least, and Mary provided the comfort and support we needed until our mother passed away in 2017, also under hospice care.

Besides holding a bachelor’s and a Master of Science degree in nursing, Mary has various oncology and gerontological certifications that demonstrate her continual pursuit of knowledge in the ever-changing medical world. She has held many positions throughout her more than 41 years of employment at Hospital Sisters Health System, including nursing assistant, staff registered nurse, oncology nursing specialist and even interim chief nursing officer, giving her a vast amount of knowledge that she is happy to share.

Mary is a member of many different organizations, including the Oncology Nursing Society; the Southeastern Wisconsin Oncology Nursing Society, of which she is past president; the Northeastern Wisconsin Oncology Nursing Society; and the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association. As a member of the Oncology Nursing Society, Mary was part of the first delegations of nurses to visit China and Cuba.

As if she didn’t already have enough to fill her hours, she also stays involved in her community by being an American Red Cross blood donor; a participant in the PROMISE study, which is testing healthy people for signs of multiple myeloma; a Sheboygan County Cancer Care Fund board member; an Alverno College school of nursing volunteer assessor; a volunteer with the American Cancer Society; and past chair of the Wisconsin State leadership board. She was actively involved in the Tobacco-Free Sheboygan County Coalition and served as co-chair for many years. She continues to be involved with many of the American Cancer Society Relay for Life events and has been on various additional committees.

Whew! I’m exhausted just writing down some of the things she does. I don’t know how she keeps going. Cancer is exhausting, time-consuming and unforgiving at times. I thank God all the time that Mary was able to help my large, extended family navigate our cancer journey while providing support for our parents. She showed great medical knowledge, patience and love and continues to be incredibly helpful on a daily basis to everyone she touches. She is truly an extraordinary healer on so many levels!

Mary Schueller devoted her entire career to helping others with cancer, and the devotion she displayed to that cause is what makes her an extraordinary healer.

What Devoting A Career to Help Others with Cancer Looks Like

A dear friend I have known for many years gave me a call on his way home from the hospital on one Saturday night. His wife just had breast cancer surgery. He was uplifting as always and happy to talk, sharing news about her and what they had to do in the following months. We talked about our faith and how our lives have gone through some detours.

As I listened to him, I paused … I was reliving some of the moments of the past year. It has been almost a year since my first appointment with my breast cancer surgeon, Dr. Pat Whitworth. I can still smell the cool October air.

On October 16, 2019, my life drastically changed, and I had to embrace a completely new journey. The past 11 months have brought many transformations with a lot of sweet “aha” moments and pure tears of joy. It has been a year of deep forgiveness and healing. It was my personal journey to find my anchors and evaluate many priorities in my life, let go of the things that did not matter anymore and say yes to the happy me.

Looking back at the past year, my quest was to embrace the change and find love tucked in my heart that I somehow lost a few years ago following my divorce. As I write this, the sunshine that peeks through the curtains reminds me of the good days ahead … Sometimes you might ask yourself, “Why do I go through all these challenges and trials.”

Then I realized, I was providing support to a dear friend and his wife who too had breast cancer. At the end of the call, my friend asked what I did differently that brought me out of the fear zone and into the warrior mode.

There was a pause then I answered, “It was my choice to either let life happen to me or pray for God’s wisdom to make the right decisions and be proactive in my healing journey.”

We have a blind faith and maybe it is important to be faithful, but the truth is that healing does not happen by doing nothing. It takes bold faith and action. It requires discovering who you are and finding your way.

You can choose to find your calm and your anchor. You can choose to stay positive. You can also surround yourself with women who have been in your shoes and could give you solid advice.

There is an amazing level of inner strength that you feel coming from these warriors. They might be fragile and petite, but they are strong.

Every day is a battle. But we have a choice to make things happen every day. We can look at our life as an opportunity to grow even when it hurts, or we can give up and not care.

So, let’s highlight some things you must become to get through any life challenge, especially breast cancer.

Being a strong woman is more than being a female version of a Roman Gladiator. There is nothing that can be compared to the strength you find when cancer attacks your body and you learn to love yourself even more. Being strong is the only choice you have and first you will cry, break down, fall apart and then you will gradually put yourself back together. Every day I would affirm I choose life. Because tomorrow is not guaranteed. You give the best to yourself first.

Speak your desires into existence. Speak healing and love into your life. That is where your strength is hidden. It is the power of your words that changes your mindset, changes your energy, and changes your life. Those words can bring peace or cause stress.

The first time I came to Dr. Whitworth’s office, there was a poster on the wall about managing stress. 

 was an amazing way to identify where you were on your healing journey.

Gratitude has led me to experience more love and the hardest thing I had to do was to learn to accept love as well. Many strong women often do not know how to love themselves fully and they have a hard time accepting love and care from others. Often it is a cultural thing or a family thing. In my Russian culture, women were taught to never complain and take care of their lives. We were taught to survive and get through times of crisis with a smile.

When you learn to accept love, you will feel worthy. And when you feel worthy of being loved and appreciated for who you are, your life will change. Your transformation will happen fast when you learn to accept love and love yourself. Because everything you will do in your life will come from the place of love for who you are, including your healing, your relationships, your career, and your business. Everything will change.

Allowing others to help you and accepting care and love is something I had to learn in the past few years. You want to be Wonder Woman, ready to take on any challenge. When you agree with the idea that having help is totally cool, you finally realize once you accept love you can give more love back into the world. Your heart is finally healing and everything else falls in place. You are more motivated to do things you have delayed for a long time and you are motivated to change your lifestyle.

Good support system and solid medical team

I have been very blessed to have an amazing surgeon. He is an incredible doctor who has been a big blessing in my life and has encouraged me to practice mindfulness and work on reducing stress.

I am grateful for my friends that provided an amazing holistic health education.

I am grateful for my church friends who supported me in so many ways. I am so grateful for my dear friends who reminded me how strong I was and who prayed for me and my healing.

I am grateful for my book agent Julie who inspired me to write and share real life experiences.

I am grateful to my sons who are my rock and joy. They are my miracles. They are my true loves.

I am grateful to my parents from whom I have managed to hide the truth about the breast cancer diagnoses for many months and finally gave in and revealed the news. I am grateful they stayed calm.

I am grateful for this journey and for my life.

Are you grateful for your inner circle? Make sure to tell them today.

When you truly embrace your strength, find gratitude and self-love and surround yourself with loving and positive people, magic things can happen.

Tatyana Gann is a publicity strategist, mindset coach, writer, lifestyle advocate and breast cancer thriver. Her aim is to inspire women to tell their story to heal their mind and body. Tatyana resides in Nashville with her two sons. You can follow her on Instagram 

Looking to change your mindset when facing down breast cancer? Here are 3 hacks to keep you calm and happy. 

3 Mindset Hacks That Can Keep Women Facing Breast Cancer Calm and Happy

My name is Timothy Green. I am 39 years old. When I was a patient in the oncology unit at NewYork-Presbyterian’s Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, I had the privilege of having Nadeen Robinson, M.S.N., RN, OCN, as my nurse. I strongly and wholeheartedly believe that she is deserving of recognition for so many reasons.

I have extreme anxiety, depression and PTSD and now am dealing with a disease in my brain and lymphoma, as well, my doctors believe. In addition, now I am deaf and severely vision impaired. This may sound cliché, but there is just something about Nadeen. In a world where so many are succumbing to mental illness — specifically, suicide — that calm is refreshing to me. To be completely honest, I was scared out of my mind, but there was something about her coming in with that smile and that infectious energy that calmed me and put my mind at ease.

She constantly sought ways to help me improve my ability to communicate with the staff and elevate my vision. Nadeen got me whiteboards, markers and an eraser so I could communicate with the nurses and doctors and know what was going on. She would sit with me and use the whiteboard to tell in detail the plan for the day as she broke down the doctor’s findings. 

I know that seems like a normal thing to do for a deaf person; however, it was her action, her time and her intent that made the difference to me. It gave me a sense of security and control in a world where one can easily get lost with full vision and hearing, let alone impaired.

As if that was not enough, Nadeen would excitedly come in each day with a new kind or color of marker with a built-in eraser, decorated board or something else that was fun to make me smile. One day she had a rolling iPad she borrowed from another nursing unit. She was so excited, as if it was something that would benefit her, and that was truly amazing. We used the iPad to connect face-to-face with a hearing-impaired person and use sign language.

I am just learning sign language, as this is all new for me, and though my ability to communicate was limited, her effort made me feel so cared for and that she had my best interest in mind. It made me feel like I mattered in a way that encouraged me to want to be better each day. Her willingness to go above and beyond is as amazing as her bedside demeanor and above anything I have ever encountered.

Nadeen’s attention to detail, willing attitude, knowledge and generosity, both on and off the clock, seem far superior to those of most in the medical field. She has been exceptional at working with me in my time of need to help with both my disability and personal care. She got me out of my room and into the hallways each day to walk around as she had everyone cheer me on, encouraging me to stay independent and not fall victim to my disability. 

I was in need of some personal items because I was staying longer than expected, and I didn’t have help because my girlfriend left while I was in the hospital due to her anxiety about all that was happening. Nadeen noticed my struggles and used her own time and money to get my clothes laundered. When you are 6 feet, 3 inches tall and 303 pounds, it’s hard to fit into a hospital bed and even more so the gowns, so you can understand how important it is to have your own clothes. Nadeen added some extra items I needed to help me feel normal throughout my stay in the hospital.

After my discharge, I needed to go to another unit, and Nadeen reached out to the admitting staff there to make sure I did not lose my bed. She assisted me with the entire process until I was in my room because I had no one with me who could help. This was not your everyday act of kindness, and it really means a lot to me that I matter to someone so special.

Health care needs more Nadeens. Her level of care is unmatched, and her endless energy and eagerness to care for her patients go far beyond expectations and the call of duty. She is not just extremely knowledgeable and professional; she has what nursing is all about, taking her oath to heart and beyond. The oncology team is fantastic, but Nadeen is definitely an example for all. I am happy to have met her. I feel like she is not only my nurse but also my dear friend. The love she displays for her job and people in general goes far beyond extraordinary. Nadeen literally changed my life.

I was feeling extreme anxiety and depression when I was in the oncology unit, and deaf is a strange place to be, but Nadeen helped me find peace with who I am and how to cope. I could write all day about how important she is, not just to me but to all the cancer patients, as well as to the hospital itself, based on her quality of work. I am asking with my whole heart and soul for you to consider her for this award, because she sets the gold standard for nursing and is the glue that holds her unit together.

Blood cancer treatment is looking far different than it did years ago, and as a result, patients are surviving longer — and often with fewer side effects.

, we’re honing in on some of the most exciting updates in the treatment of patients with mantle cell lymphoma, including a new chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy that was approved just a few months ago. The new therapy, which involves programming a patients’ own cells to fight cancer, is helping patients with the dis- ease live longer, better lives. However, CAR-T cell therapy is not without downsides.

For many, the treatment can be extraordinarily expensive. Another feature story in this issue discusses the hefty price tag of CAR-T cell therapy, as well as financial assistance programs that help patients pay for this treatment.

Although the past decade has brought breakthroughs in treatment for adult blood cancers, advances for pediatric blood cancers seemed few and far between. That, however, is changing. Researchers, nonprofit organizations and patients are collaborating to test new therapies for children to bring more options to young patients.

Our third feature story delves into the coming of age for pediatric blood cancer research and highlights a few families who have benefitted from it.

No cancer breakthrough is possible without clinical trials. But many patients are hesitant to participate because they fear they’ll be treated with an ineffective agent or, worse, a placebo. Dr. Susan M. O’Brien, a hematology oncologist at UCI Health in Orange, California, who is actively involved in clinical trials, discusses these misconceptions and the potential benefits of enrolling.

Also in this issue: Mary DeRome of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation explains a program that helps patients get the right team, the right tests and the right treatment, including the right clinical trials.

I hope you find this special issue of CURE® both useful and enlightening.