Happy Valentine's Day

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The day is winding down and I hope that all of you have had a wonderful day!It has been a quiet day here, but nice in so many ways. Chloe climbed up in bed with us during the middle of the night. She woke up saying "happy sweetheart day" and it was so much fun helping put her Valentine's day bags and cards together. She hasn't yet mastered how to spell her name but gave it a big attempt. All of them included little lopsided hearts she drew :)Before cancer I never doubted that I would be here for each every milestone my children accomplished. After my diagnosis, I fully realized that tomorrow is never promised. Being here today is a definite victory to celebrate. I have been so lucky to watch my older daughters transform into beautiful young ladies and so very happy to watch Chloe as she grows from curious toddle into confident pre-schooler.At times I think my family has been unfazed by this dreadful disease, knowing that we have dealt with cancer as normally and positively as possible. At other times, the gravity shows and I realize how much depth and breadth colon cancer has had in shaping their lives. They are more sympathetic, empathetic, and mature than many others that are their age. No holidays, even self made, are taken for granted.Today is magical ... a picture of hope in rose petals sent before sunrise by Karlie, a beautiful card and a clean kitchen from Katie, chocolate kisses from Chloe. Dinner out with Ronnie ... and built in babysitters :) We are living NOW and that is a great gift. And right now ... love is in the air! Happy Valentine's Day!

Suzanne

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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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