CURE's Top 5 Stories: October 2019

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Here are the top five CURE® stories for October 2019.

Here are the top five CURE® stories for October 2019.

5. Advice for Future Cancer Survivors

It’s hard for CURE® Contributor Felicia Mitchell to have regrets. But as she begins her 10th year post-diagnosis, she shares a list of things she would change if she could go through her cancer journey all over again.

4. Minimally Invasive Techniques Gain Popularity

A variety of minimally invasive procedures are now being used to remove genitourinary tumors and spare patients the pain of open surgery; learn more about them in this feature from our latest special issue.

3. Metastatic Breast Cancer Day Facts & Figures

Breast cancer that has spread beyond the breast and lymph nodes to other organs is considered metastatic. Here, we share a round-up of fast facts and the latest news and updates in this disease space for Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day on October 13th.

2. Using Physical Therapy to Beat Lingering Side Effects

In this story, a physical therapist and testicular cancer survivor shares his experience with the health benefits of rehabilitation after cancer.

1. Pink is Not the Only Color That Matters

When contributor Doris Cardwell dealt with inflammatory breast cancer, she had a hard time coping with all things pink. Here, she discusses why October can be a great time to be aware of not just breast cancer, but all cancer types.

And as always, for links to all of our top stories and more, visit curetoday.com.

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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.
Yuliya P.L Linhares, MD, an expert on CLL
Yuliya P.L Linhares, MD, and Josie Montegaard, MSN, AGPCNP-BC, experts on CLL
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