Sunday, November 2, 2008

"Integrate Cancer into the Tapestry of Who You Are"

That is a quote by Rhonda Johnson, PhD ( Southern Illinois University School of Medicine).

I heard it yesterday at the 2008 Ovarian Cancer Survivors Course sponsored by the Gynecological Cancer Foundation and supported by NYU Cancer Institute and the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

Dr Carmel Cohen spoke about the progress that has been made in treating Ovarian Cancer since the first surgery on Christmas Day 1809. MS Jane Todd Crawford was one brave,tough woman.

Dr Judith Wolk spoke of the relationship between stress and Ovarian cancer and the study on stress undertaken at M.D. Andersen.

Dr Ron Alvarez discussed novel approaches to treating cancer from new chemos like trabectedin to angiogenisis agents like Avastin to targeted therapies like PARP inhibitors to immunotherapy agents. He also spoke of more individualized treatments based on the cell structure of a women's cancer.

Dr Carol Brown spoke about CA-125 and its use in monitoring response to treatment.

Dr Linda Dyska gave a very informative talk about managing recurrent disease and I found it parallelled what my doctors had told me.

Dr Stephanie Blank gave us pointers about how to talk to our doctors.

I am hoping that GCF will post the slides from each talk on their website so that those who could not attend could still benefit from the information.

Thank you GCF, OCRF and NYU for supporting Ovarian Cancer survivors by having this course.

LIVESTRONG
Dee
Every Day is a Blessing.

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