Lung cancer video touches on emotions and support

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The emotional challenges of living with cancer are often overlooked in order to focus on fighting the disease itself. Recently, the American Lung Association released a video, "Navigating Lung Cancer: Stories of Support," that features three lung cancer survivors discussing their emotional journeys and how they found support. While the video offers some advice specific to lung cancer patients, there is a lot of general information that applies to any cancer patient, survivor or caregiver. The stories from the three survivors are moving and filled with anecdotes and personal experiences that provide guidance and hope. An oncology nurse and an oncology social worker provide professional advice throughout the stories. The video is hosted by Greta Kreuz, a lung cancer survivor and news anchor for the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C.The video is the latest addition to the ALA's online lung cancer website, "Facing Lung Cancer: Support from Day One." The website has a lot of resources, including an interactive library with other videos, basic information on lung cancer and a section for healthcare providers. There is also support for patients and caregivers and help for making treatment decisions. The website was launched last year with support from Lily Oncology. The ALA is responsible for all content. Check out the website and video, and maybe you will find some information and inspiration to help you on your journey.

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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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