CindyA

With all the fall vegetables coming out in stores all around what are your favorite? I found a great recipe on FACEBOOK today. This sounds delicious! 1 small butternut squash (2 pounds/900 grams), peeled, sliced 3 parsnips, sliced 1 large red onion, sliced 1 large red pepper, sliced 1 clove garlic, minced 1/3 cup KRAFT SIGNATURE Sundried Tomato and Oregano Dressing, divided 1/4 cup OSCAR MAYER Real Bacon Bits 2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted HEAT oven to 450ºF. Place squash, parsnips, onions, peppers and garlic in 15x10x3/4-inch baking pan. Add 2 tablespoons dressing; toss to coat. Spread to evenly cover bottom of pan. BAKE 40 to 45 minutes or until vegetables are tender and golden brown, stirring occasionally. Spoon into large serving bowl. Add spinach; toss lightly. TOP with bacon and nuts. Drizzle with remaining dressing. Serve warm roasted vegetables tossed with baby spinach leaves for a tasty and healthy side salad or entree. Finish it off by drizzling with sun-dried tomato dressing and topping with bacon and pine nuts. For a vegetarian option, leave off the bacon. Recipe courtesy of KRAFT. Nutritional Information: Calories 230, Total fat 8 g, Saturated fat 1 g, Cholesterol 5 mg, Sodium 350 mg, Carbohydrate 38 g, Dietary fiber 7 g, Sugars 12 g, Protein 7 g, Vitamin A 200 %DV, Vitamin C 140 %DV, Calcium 15 %DV, Iron 25 %DV, Diabetes Food Choices:1-1/2 Carbohydrates + 1-1/2 Fats. Serving Size = 1-1/2 cups (375 mL) Nutrition Bonus: This flavourful roasted vegetable salad is sure to be a hit with both family and friends! As a bonus, not only do the squash and spinach team up to provide an excellent source of vitamin A, but the peppers are also an excellent source of vitamin C.

Diane - shopping sounds like a delight! I'm kind of bummed to hear that your kids take almost everything you give them back. My Mom gives interesting gifts to me every year. A few years back she bought me a hair removing set. I thought it was hilarious, but she sincerely picked it out for me. It was one of those sand paper hand held looking things. Well I didn't return it because believe it or not I actually used it! HA! Last year she bought me a paper towel holder. I love her. I'm cold natured too! I sit on a heated blanket here in my office/ dining room (that never gets used). They make all sizes. Mine is just a little throw. I think the brand it "Sunset"? It's really soft. Would that be something that you could get? It uses little electricity, and keeps ya toasty. I'm off to get the kids and will return shortly...

Please comment after you watch this video. I'd love to hear what you think of it!

I thought I'd start today's air post! I WILL be smelling the scent of cookies baking after I pick my kids up from school and an extra friend for my daughter today who's never been over. My daughter is an extrovert and the little friend she has invited over is an introvert. This shall be interesting. I still have to work while they are here so I have the kitchen table ready with a table cloth, clear glass jars, glitter and glue. My thought is that they will pour glue in, sprinkle glitter in there and add a battery operated tea light inside. Cute take home gift, that cost me $0.50. What do you think? Too cheesy for 7 year olds? Diane, yes we will be having 4 Thanksgivings! You know, I forgot to add the Thanksgiving with my mother in law. We haven't planned it yet but it'll happen...even if I don't want it to, haha! What's everyone's plans for the weekend? I will be at the Breathe Deep DFW walk for my second time. I will be honoring my friend Esther. She had a "hiccup" last month but she is out of the hospital and says she is just taking every day "day by day". She is in great spirits! We have so many knee slapping memories together I smile just typing this. So that's where I will be tomorrow. This will be the first year my Husband & son will join be going. Last year my Husband was traveling so I took my brother and my daughter. Enough about me! Tell me about you!

Hi Craig! I'm so glad to hear that Tarceva is helping to push everything back. Please keep us updated with your success. I'd love to see more of your writing soon. Alyssa125 - Welcome to you as well!! Sorry you had to find us but we are glad to have you here. Pull up your favorite brew and check out our other boards too.

Hi Marlene, Our Foundation's website has an amazing "Ask the Experts" page within their website. There you can search for questions others have asked or you can even submit one yourself. They are all answered by experts. Here is the link http://expertblog.lungevity.org/ask-the-experts/ I agree with Diane about always asking your Oncologist first before you try anything. Please keep posting and let us know what you discover.

It sounds like you both have really chilly air. Here in Dallas we have had a cool front come in and it is chilly to us too. No snow, just 50's and some rain. Diane it sounds like you will have a very busy November. At least you get to take a break from cooking this year. I had Thanksgiving at our house once, it was too far of a drive for my family so we just go to everyone else's house now. Both my Husband & I have divorced parents so we are lucky our parents still cook. This year we will have an early dinner with his Dad, one with my mom 4 days later and then another dinner with my Dad on Thanksgiving, & again on Friday because that's wen my sister will be able to join us. December I will be in a Zumba class trying to work off all this food! Eric you had a great day of luck, that's awesome. Did you happen to play the lotto that night? I enjoyed reading your post, I found myself smiling the entire time! I'm glad to see you all post yesterday. Why do you think the board gets quiet? Do you have any ideas how we can get things pumped in here? If I could play music in here I would. I look forward to your ideas.

I found this great recipe online that has easy ingredients, and only takes 14 minutes to cook. Ingredients 1 tablespoon dark sesame oil 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh peeled ginger 6 garlic cloves, sliced 2 cups diced cooked chicken breast 4 cups chicken stock (such as Swanson) 2 tablespoons ponzu sauce (such as Kikkoman) 4 cups thinly sliced bok choy 1 cup diagonally sliced green onions Preparation 1. Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add ginger and garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add chicken and next 3 ingredients. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes. Stir in green onions. Ladle soup evenly into 6 bowls. Serve with: Crispy Sesame Wontons Note: MyRecipes is working with Let's Move!, the Partnership for a Healthier America, and USDA's MyPlate to give anyone looking for healthier options access to a trove of recipes that will help them create healthy, tasty plates. For more information about creating a healthy plate, visit www.choosemyplate.gov.

My father is 86 and has an early stage NSCLC: What are his treatment options? October 27th, 2013 - by Dr. Jack West The current standard of care for treating early stage NSCLC is surgery, but not everyone is a strong candidate for surgery. A patient I just recently saw in clinic illustrates the challenge we face when patients who are elderly and/or sick for various reasons present with a curable lung cancer. This particularly gentleman is 86, actually never smoked cigarettes but “ate smoke” as a fireman with no protective mask for decades and now has COPD, and also significant heart disease, with a prior heart attack nearly 30 years ago and several other heart problems since then. He was involved in a motor vehicle accident a month ago (which he hastens to note wasn’t his fault) which led to his getting imaging of his neck that incidentally revealed a 2.5 cm mass in the apex (top) of his left lung, no enlarged lymph nodes. He had no symptoms from it yet. This is, in fact, how most early stage lung cancers are found: rather than being related to symptoms, they are found incidentally when someone undergoes pre-operative imaging for heart disease, gall bladder surgery, etc., or now increasingly for lung cancer screening. So what do we do when someone is a marginal or poor candidate for a standard lung cancer surgery but has a potentially curable lung cancer? Historically, the “gold standard” is a surgery that removes an entire lung lobe (1/3 of the right lobe or 1/2 of the left lung, which is a little smaller because the heart sits in the left side of the chest). And until a few years ago, lung cancer surgery almost always involved a long incision and cutting through several ribs. Many patients were old enough and/or frail enough that surgery may have been prohibitively dangerous. Thankfully, our discussions now may include a few options in such patients. Many lung cancer surgeons now routinely offer a minimally invasive video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS), which allows many patients to have surgery through a few dime-sized “ports”. This helps remarkably with the rigors of surgery. In addition, there is some evidence that patients with resectable lung cancer who are 75 or older do just as well in terms of survival with a wedge resection – which removes just the tumor with a margin of normal lung around it — rather than a full lobectomy. But the biggest development for such patients is the advent of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT). Radiation therapy was always an option for “medically inoperable” early stage lung cancer, but that typically required a patient to come in for treatment every day for 6-7 weeks. Instead, the new procedure of SBRT, which is available at more and more centers, is a very appealing alternative for patients to undergo a treatment that gives high doses of radiation in just a few treatments — typically just 4 or 5 over a week and a half. Most exciting is the growing evidence that people with no nodal involvement or distant spread can do very well, with local control rates of up to 90% for cancers under 2-3 centimeters and at least 70% for tumors larger than about 3 cm. We’re still getting a sense of long-term survival, which is often compromised by the other medical problems of patients getting SBRT, but it appears very comparable to limited lung surgery. Beyond this, there are even a few newer treatments that are potentially available, such as radiofrequency ablation (RFA) or high frequency ultrasound to treat such lesions. They all share a potential to treat an early lung cancer effectively without surgery. To me, the leading question I have is whether they add any real value over the treatments we already have. But they’re evolving, and we’re learning about how they do and whether they might emerge as more effective or safer than SBRT or a VATS wedge resection. My patient will be meeting with both a surgeon and a radiation oncologist this week to determine which approach he’s inclined to take. Considering that it wasn’t very long ago that such patients had no appealing options, it’s terrific that the field has developed to the point that he now has several choices to consider.

Hello Board members of LCSC! LUNGevity has a lot of events going on this weekend and almost every weekend in November. I will post them all in the events board. I hope you will be at one of these many events. If you will be, please reply below to represent your walk or activity. As for me, you can catch me at the Breathe Deep DFW walk this Saturday November 9th, in Arlington, Texas.

GLOUCESTER – Lung cancer is by far the leading cause of cancer deaths, and Riverside Walter Reed Hospital is now offering early detection screenings to help catch cases earlier and save more lives. All Riverside Health System hospitals and diagnostic centers now offer low-dose CT screening for patients who have risk factors and may be at risk of developing lung cancer. Typically, chest X-rays are used to diagnose patients who already exhibit signs of cancer, but often the disease is at an advanced staged when it's detected. The new early detection screenings are available to high-risk patients before symptoms develop. ($225) - See more at: http://www.tidewaterreview.com/news/va- ... 15iIq.dpuf

YOUNGSTOWN Humility of Mary Health Partners has launched a lung-cancer screening program that offers low-cost service based on state-of-the-art screening methods for lung cancer in high-risk patients. People can be referred for the services by their doctor, or call Humility of Mary Healthline at 330-480-3151 or 1-877-700-HMHP. Within 48 hours, a nurse will call to review risk factors and schedule a screening at a nearby HMHP site. The HMHP program offers a screening chest CT scan at a discounted self-pay price of $95. The cost is usually $887. The program is made possible by the HMHP Foundation.

When you were first touch by lung cancer, which topics were most important to you? What answers did you seek? I'm interested in seeing which topics are/were important to you that maybe we can incorporate into a conference or printed materials. Thank you so much for any insight you will provide. -Cindy

Diane, I too love a blazing fire when it is cold out. Paired up with cozy blankets and a good movie...sounds like a great way to cheer up! Visiting with friends is great way to get out of a cloudy mood too. I don't have dogs (yet), but I imagine their playful, loving nature would make any one have to smile. Just seeing the name "Rocky" made me smile, what a great name! Thank you both for responding!

Good morning everyone, I posted on our Survivor Resource Center page on Facebook, and I asked "What cheers you up?". Some people like ice cream, some people hang out with friends, some people get happy from hugging children. So, what cheers you up when the sun isn't shining so bright? For me, I like a tall glass of iced tea, while playing board games with my kids. I'm curious to see what new ideas you will send my way. Here's to hoping you don't need any cheering up today.

Congrats Carol, that is spectacular news.

Do you know someone who lives in Ohio? Wish they would get a scan? Well most of Ohio's central hospitals are now offering scans for $99. Here is the link: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories ... ncers.html Mount Carmel Health System and OhioHealth generally offer the screenings to smokers who are ages 55 to 74 who have smoked the equivalent of one pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years (also known as 30 “pack years”).

Lung cancer accounts for more deaths than any other cancer in both men and women. Finding any cancer at an early stage is always best, but especially with lung cancer. Based on the findings released in the 2010 National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), Franciscan St. Francis Health was the first in Indiana and one of the first in the nation to offer a lung CT screening program for the early detection of lung cancer. The lung screening is safe, simple, non-invasive and results in a minimal amount of radiation exposure. Since smoking also increases the risk of heart disease, a Heart Scan is included for free. Who should have a Lung Scan? The screening is recommended for men and women who meet the following criteria: Current or former smoker between the ages of 55 and 75 Have averaged smoking one pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years (2 packs a day for 15 years, 3 packs a day for 10 years, etc.) Call 1-877-888-1777 to schedule a screening. The screening package includes: Low-radiation dose lung computed tomography (CT) scan evaluated by a radiologist who specializes in lung disease Heart computed tomography (CT) scan (coronary artery calcium scoring) evaluated by a cardiologist Easy-to-understand report and educational information Heart risk assessment

PEORIA - In observance of National Lung Cancer Awareness Month, two facilities are promoting good health in November. Both OSF Saint Francis Medical Center and UnityPoint Health-Methodist are offering free scans to qualified patients. People must be between the ages of 55 and 80 years old, and either a current or former smoker with no health symptoms. Scans normally cost about $175. UnityPoint Health-Methodist says it’s an opportunity for people to get screened for the disease who might not otherwise have been able to afford it. Those interested in a free screening are encouraged to find out if they qualify for the service. Call OSF Saint Francis Medical Center at 309-624-5864 or UnityPoint Health-Methodist at 309-671-8296.

The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force says its recommendation will cut U.S. lung cancer deaths by 20,000 a year. The American Cancer Society adopted very similar recommendations in January of this year and the 2013 Community Needs Assessment identified cancer as a priority in addressing the health of the local community, according to an ACS press release. In observance of November as Lung Cancer Awareness Month, UnityPoint Health-Methodist is offering a drastically discounted price for those who qualify for the diagnostic scan. Instead of the normal $175.00 fee, which is not covered by Medicare or private insurance, Methodist will be offering the scan free of charge during the month of November “This is a fantastic move,” said Ryan Taylor, director of oncology and pharmacy services at Methodist in the press release. “Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer, but there hasn’t been a reliable, safe way to screen high-risk people until now. This will give many people the opportunity of taking the screening who might otherwise been unable to afford it.” In order to qualify for the discounted November price, people should be: • Aged between 55 and 80. • Current smoker with a 30 pack-year history. A pack year is number of packs per day x years of smoking = pack years. Example: 1.5 packs/day x 30 years = 45 pack years. • Former smoker who quit within the past 15 years with 30 pack-year history. • Symptom free – no unexplained weight loss, no chest pain, no change in cough or sputum production. • No history of lung cancer or lung surgery. • No history of a lung CT within the past 18 months. Those interested in the low-dose radiation CT scan should call 671-8296 to speak with a nurse about qualifying for screening and to make an appointment. All positive findings will be conveyed to a primary care physician whom the person designates. If there is no designated primary care physician, Methodist can assist in connecting with a Methodist provider. Read more: http://www.pekintimes.com/article/20131 ... z2iTjVfbe1

Free Lung Screening: Oklahoma. Studies show that CT screenings can lower the risk of lung cancer fatalities. *Please share* with people you know in OK. http://ow.ly/q3Auj The Cancer Centers of Southwest Oklahoma (CCSO) are excited to offer FREE lung cancer screenings at all three Cancer Center locations! The low-dose CT (LDCT) lung screening is a new service offered by the CCSO. LDCT is a special CT of your lungs that can pick up very small lung abnormalities. Studies by the National Lung Screening Trial show that a lung screening can lower the risk of death from lung cancer by 20 percent in people who are high risk. To qualify for a free LDCT lung screening, you do not need to be a current patient, but certain criteria must be met and an order from your primary care physician must be received to schedule an appointment. If you don't have a primary care physician, the staff of the CCSO will assist you in finding one. According to Debbie McDonald, Tumor Board Registrar for the CCSO, five free screenings have been performed at the Lawton location and four have come back positive for cancer. "This CT has the ability to catch lung cancer at a very early stage, before symptoms even develop," said McDonald. "We are all very excited. This screening can save lives!" The LDCT lung screening exam is one of the easiest screening exams you can have. It takes less than 10 seconds! Even better, no medications are given and no needles are used. You can eat before and after the exam and you don't even need to get changed, as long as the clothing on your chest does not contain metal. If you think you meet the criteria, call 877.231.4440, Monday - Friday, 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM to complete a screening questionnaire. - See more at: http://www.ccmhonline.com/free-lung-scr ... LwZBQ.dpuf

October 18th, 2013 - by Dr. Jack West These days, I hope the answer is yes. We’ve previously covered the various potential members of a cancer care team, but I wanted to focus today on why it can be so valuable to have more than just an oncologist or other single specialist that you have confidence in, as important as that is. More than ever before, lung cancer care today requires solid people from several medical disciplines and good communication among them. There are a few ways to have them work together, but it should be a red flag if you sense that they don’t work well together or are providing conflicting messages. We’ve probably all been part of teams that were greater than the sum of the parts, but also of ones in which members step on each others toes or even antagonize each other. Importantly, this applies whether you have early stage lung cancer, late stage, or something in between. Even for someone with stage I cancer, you need input from the pulmonologist who typically initiates a workup, the surgeon who may resect an early lung cancer, the pathologist providing a detailed interpretation, and sometimes a medical oncologist and/or radiation oncologist to provide thoughts on the merits of additional post-operative treatment. For those with advanced/metastatic disease, you often still have the pulmonologist or surgeon doing the diagnosis, the pathologist providing critical input and often coordinating molecular testing, the medical oncologist overseeing systemic therapy, but often a radiation oncologist providing palliative radiation to a painful bone lesion or stereotactic radiosurgery for brain metastases, then your pulmonologist again helping with management of a recurrent pleural effusion or even placing a bronchial stent to help with breathing. And there is no place where coordination as a team is more important than for locally advanced lung cancer, whether stage III NSCLC or limited SCLC, which routinely requires at least two and sometimes three different modalities (chemo, surgery, radiation) for optimal care. These treatments may be overlapping or require close timing and sharing of decision-making based on imaging and pathologist input from staging performed by the surgeon, pulmonologist, and sometimes interventional radiologist. How big a difference can teamwork make? I know of many patients who describe the damaging effect of being advised to undergo surgery by the surgeon and then told by the oncologist that this is a bad idea. How confident can a patient be about a decision in which members of the same team openly advise against each other’s recommendations? Knowing that nearly all patients need support along the way from multiple disciplines, poor communication or animosity among team members can lead to effects as small but challenging as delays between referrals (still disconcerting when you find out you have new brain metastases) or as significant as botched coordination of time-sensitive overlapping treatment modalities. How do team members work well together. Some of it comes down to chemistry, as hard as that is to define. Some of my closest friends are the leading lung cancer radiation oncologist, thoracic surgeons, pulmonologist, and dedicated lung pathologist at my center. I should take more time to step back and be thankful that our team enjoys each other’s company so much — I certainly think it instills confidence in our patients to have us step out of the exam room to call each other to review scans or other aspects of a case together in real time or have them encourage the patient to come right over to their office for an immediate consultation. In some centers, the different specialists walk across the hall or up or down a flight of stairs to talk together; in others, they may have each other on their cell phone speed dials. But it certainly helps to have a team in which you know the members communicate often and comfortably together. The other leading mechanism for sharing views is a “tumor board” that is done at many leading cancer centers. In big ones, there may be separate tumor board meetings about each of several major cancer types: our center has ones for lung cancer, breast cancer, GI cancers, gynecologic cancers, genitourinary cancers, brain tumors, sarcomas, and blood-based cancers. Smaller centers may have a single tumor board for multiple different cancer types all in the same meeting. Here, cases are reviewed in the format of a typically very brief sketch of the patient background — symptoms, medical issues, etc. — and then imaging is reviewed together, pathology from biopsies reviewed and discussed, and then potential recommended plans are made together with input from many disciplines all at once. Ideally, here the different specialists can hash out a clear consensus recommendation or perhaps a range of 2-3 options to present to a patient — the important issue is to be able offer these ideas as a group and not conflicting individuals. I have participated in hundreds of tumor boards at dozens of institutions over my past nearly 20 years focused on cancer care, and I have found them to be a critical litmus test for the program. At their worst, the members disrespect each other and roll their eyes or snipe at each other at a scheduled argument every week. But at their best, it can be the highlight of the week as we weigh the merits of different options and develop a solid plan from what started as open questions. Cases become a bit like puzzles to approach and ideally solve together. So I think it’s critically important to get a sense of how the whole group of specialists you work with in the cancer clinic function together. Whether they work well or poorly together can have a major impact on your care and especially your experience of cancer treatment. What has your experience been? Do you have an uplifting experience to share that instilled confidence, or perhaps a horror story that led you to a different center?

October 18th, 2013 - by Dr. Jack West These days, I hope the answer is yes. We’ve previously covered the various potential members of a cancer care team, but I wanted to focus today on why it can be so valuable to have more than just an oncologist or other single specialist that you have confidence in, as important as that is. More than ever before, lung cancer care today requires solid people from several medical disciplines and good communication among them. There are a few ways to have them work together, but it should be a red flag if you sense that they don’t work well together or are providing conflicting messages. We’ve probably all been part of teams that were greater than the sum of the parts, but also of ones in which members step on each others toes or even antagonize each other. Importantly, this applies whether you have early stage lung cancer, late stage, or something in between. Even for someone with stage I cancer, you need input from the pulmonologist who typically initiates a workup, the surgeon who may resect an early lung cancer, the pathologist providing a detailed interpretation, and sometimes a medical oncologist and/or radiation oncologist to provide thoughts on the merits of additional post-operative treatment. For those with advanced/metastatic disease, you often still have the pulmonologist or surgeon doing the diagnosis, the pathologist providing critical input and often coordinating molecular testing, the medical oncologist overseeing systemic therapy, but often a radiation oncologist providing palliative radiation to a painful bone lesion or stereotactic radiosurgery for brain metastases, then your pulmonologist again helping with management of a recurrent pleural effusion or even placing a bronchial stent to help with breathing. And there is no place where coordination as a team is more important than for locally advanced lung cancer, whether stage III NSCLC or limited SCLC, which routinely requires at least two and sometimes three different modalities (chemo, surgery, radiation) for optimal care. These treatments may be overlapping or require close timing and sharing of decision-making based on imaging and pathologist input from staging performed by the surgeon, pulmonologist, and sometimes interventional radiologist. How big a difference can teamwork make? I know of many patients who describe the damaging effect of being advised to undergo surgery by the surgeon and then told by the oncologist that this is a bad idea. How confident can a patient be about a decision in which members of the same team openly advise against each other’s recommendations? Knowing that nearly all patients need support along the way from multiple disciplines, poor communication or animosity among team members can lead to effects as small but challenging as delays between referrals (still disconcerting when you find out you have new brain metastases) or as significant as botched coordination of time-sensitive overlapping treatment modalities. How do team members work well together. Some of it comes down to chemistry, as hard as that is to define. Some of my closest friends are the leading lung cancer radiation oncologist, thoracic surgeons, pulmonologist, and dedicated lung pathologist at my center. I should take more time to step back and be thankful that our team enjoys each other’s company so much — I certainly think it instills confidence in our patients to have us step out of the exam room to call each other to review scans or other aspects of a case together in real time or have them encourage the patient to come right over to their office for an immediate consultation. In some centers, the different specialists walk across the hall or up or down a flight of stairs to talk together; in others, they may have each other on their cell phone speed dials. But it certainly helps to have a team in which you know the members communicate often and comfortably together. The other leading mechanism for sharing views is a “tumor board” that is done at many leading cancer centers. In big ones, there may be separate tumor board meetings about each of several major cancer types: our center has ones for lung cancer, breast cancer, GI cancers, gynecologic cancers, genitourinary cancers, brain tumors, sarcomas, and blood-based cancers. Smaller centers may have a single tumor board for multiple different cancer types all in the same meeting. Here, cases are reviewed in the format of a typically very brief sketch of the patient background — symptoms, medical issues, etc. — and then imaging is reviewed together, pathology from biopsies reviewed and discussed, and then potential recommended plans are made together with input from many disciplines all at once. Ideally, here the different specialists can hash out a clear consensus recommendation or perhaps a range of 2-3 options to present to a patient — the important issue is to be able offer these ideas as a group and not conflicting individuals. I have participated in hundreds of tumor boards at dozens of institutions over my past nearly 20 years focused on cancer care, and I have found them to be a critical litmus test for the program. At their worst, the members disrespect each other and roll their eyes or snipe at each other at a scheduled argument every week. But at their best, it can be the highlight of the week as we weigh the merits of different options and develop a solid plan from what started as open questions. Cases become a bit like puzzles to approach and ideally solve together. So I think it’s critically important to get a sense of how the whole group of specialists you work with in the cancer clinic function together. Whether they work well or poorly together can have a major impact on your care and especially your experience of cancer treatment. What has your experience been? Do you have an uplifting experience to share that instilled confidence, or perhaps a horror story that led you to a different center?

Hi everyone! Happy Autumn! Are you like me, do you look forward to Autumn? I think if crisp cool air, apple and cinnamon scents everywhere & warm food. Team LUNGevity posted this recipe on their Facebook page and I thought it sounded too good not to share with you! The great thing about slow cookers is that you work for a short amount of time and enjoy a great warm home cooked meal when you are ready. If you have too many leftovers, try freezing them in freezer bags for a rainy day. Do you have a great slow cooker recipe you'd like to share? Please reply with it below. _________________________________________________________________________ Here is the link in case you want to view the photos: http://www.eatliverun.com/crock-pot-bee ... uash-stew/ Crock Pot Beef and Butternut Squash Stew serves 6 Print this Recipe! Ingredients: 1.5 lbs beef stew meat, chopped into 1″ pieces 1 tbsp canola oil 5 small red or purple potatoes, chopped 3 large carrots, chopped 1 yellow onion, chopped 1 tsp minced garlic 10 oz sliced cremini mushrooms 1 2.5 lb butternut squash, peeled and chopped 1 quart beef broth (4 cups) 1 bay leaf 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce 1 tbsp soy sauce 2 tsp salt 2 tsp sugar 1/4 tsp black pepper pinch of cayenne pepper 1/2 tsp paprika 1/2 cup flour Directions: Place the flour in a shallow dish with the chopped beef. Toss well to coat. Heat the canola oil over medium high heat. Add the onion and saute for about five minutes until soft. Add the beef and garlic to the pan and continue sauteing until the beef has browned. Place the beef, onions and garlic at the bottom of your Crock Pot. Next, add the bay leaf, butternut squash, mushrooms, chopped carrots and potatoes. Pour the beef broth over and add the Worcestershire, soy sauce, sugar and paprika— if you are using a 5 qt Crock Pot like me, it will almost overflow but don’t worry, it won’t! Also, it won’t look like there is enough liquid in the pot — there is. Place the lid on the Crock Pot and turn the heat to low. Cook for 8-10 hours. Right before serving, add the salt and pepper to taste. Remove the bay leaf! This stew freezes wonderfully and is a very comforting meal on cold rainy nights. Time: active time —- 10 minutes total time — 10 hours

Patient Access to Your Own Data: What Are You Looking For, and What Has Your Experience Been? October 11th, 2013 - by Dr. Jack West This week, my medical oncology group met with one of the hospital administrators working on our center’s roll-out of “MyChart”, the patient-focused side of our electronic medical record that is making it increasingly possible for patients to access their information, including chart notes, lab results, pathology findings, imaging reports — in other words, pretty much their entire medical record. Historically, doctors have tended to be resistant to this idea for a wide range of reasons, including fear that this will facilitate lawsuits to concern that people will read in their clinic notes about them being “SOB” (short of breath) and misinterpreting it as being the better known non-medical version of an SOB. In pilot experiences, though, that have led to growing momentum for the “gimme my damn data” movement from empowered patients, those fears haven’t come to pass, and things continue to move toward greater transparency and access for to records. Aside from patients simply wanting to know more about their situation, there are certainly practical reasons why any patient should want access to their information. I have reviewed a few medic0-legal cases of patients who were found to have a small lung nodule on an incidentally performed pre-operative or ER chest x-ray that was suggested to be followed up but slipped through the cracks, the patient then presenting with metastatic lung cancer 14 months after their incidental potentially early stage and curable lung cancer would have been detected. Any patient seeing that report would have been sure to follow up. As more tests are done more easily and doctors tend to perform “team medicine” covering a larger group of patients in less time, it’s all too easy for a critical piece of information to be overlooked or routed to a doctor who isn’t part of the regular team for that patient. The patient being able to review their own data provides a great safety net. Of course, patients can also help chase down information and treatment options. While we might imagine that it’s feasible to rely only on the doctor to know and offer every treatment option available for a patient, cancer care has become so complex and specialized that it’s wrong to presume that any one person can know everything that could help a patient or every clinical trial that might be available. The patient and caregivers for them are likely to be the most motivated people, and they can potentially spend far more time doing deep searches for specific information that even the most dedicated oncologist can’t do when they have many patients to care for.