How to Give Yourself a Present on Your Journey: Meditation
By Jean Kane on April 17th, 2013 Categories: The Breast Cancer Journey, Treatment & Side EffectsWhen I was going through treatment, delicious breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and delectable desserts arrived in the “magic cooler” outside my garage door most days for over a month. Someone even made a lunch and delivered it to school for my 6th grader every day for a week (because she is my fourth child, and I’ve made over 6,300 lunches over the years — I …
A Hair Loss Checklist: The Steps You Need to Take Before You Undergo Treatment
By Christine Lafferty on December 21st, 2012 Categories: Day-to-Day Matters, Treatment & Side EffectsAs women we tend to think about how others react to a diagnosis, sometimes putting aside our own emotions because we want to soothe others. We want to make sure they are all o.k.
If you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer, when you finally sit down and absorb everything, you know you need a plan. After all the medical decisions are made, and if chemotherapy …
SABCS: A Recap of Triple-Negative Research
By Patricia Prijatel on December 11th, 2012 Categories: Research News, Symptoms & Diagnosis, Treatment & Side EffectsThe best news from the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is its emphasis on triple-negative breast cancer. There are so many papers presented on the subject that I can’t keep up. Those of us who have been hanging around this dance for a long time—I was diagnosed in 2006—remember the frustration of seeing and hearing little about this disease from researchers and nothing from …
Reconstruction Coverage Under the Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act
By Laura Wong-Pan on October 11th, 2012 Categories: Day-to-Day Matters, Treatment & Side EffectsWhen you are diagnosed with breast cancer and opt for mastectomy and breast reconstruction, the last thing you want to worry about is whether your surgery will be covered by your health insurance plan. Such surgical procedures can cost tens of thousands of dollars, taking into account the bills from the lab, the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the surgical assistant, the hospital, and others.
Prior to …
Including Palliative Care as Part of Your Treatment — from the Time of Diagnosis
By Hollye Harrington Jacobs, RN, MS, MSW on August 15th, 2012 Categories: Treatment & Side EffectsRight after my FBC diagnosis (f-bomb breast cancer for new readers), my husband and I had an information gathering week. After a series of diagnostic tests to determine the extent of the disease, we had a series of meetings to interview doctors to determine who would become a part of my/our health care team.
One big misnomer in our culture is that doctors (solely) …
