Mobile and Web Apps for Care Management: A Guide

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Have you noticed that there seem to be technology tools for nearly everything except for what you need most - managing your health? 

From prescription reminders to sharing your records to links to online support groups, we've curated a list of online tools (either available on your computer or your mobile phone) that can help guide you. As a note, this post is meant to introduce a variety of free applications available online and/or on your mobile phone, and is not an endorsement or recommendation.

Information Management and Organization

• Cancer.net’s free app provides a guide on 120 cancer types and provides a place to save information about prescription medications, a symptom tracker and an interactive tool to keep track of questions to ask your healthcare provider and record their voice answers (note: Spanish-version available).
• Pocket Cancer Care Guide helps you ask your healthcare provider and team the right questions.

iChemoDiary is available through the iTunes Store (free)

• iChemo Diary (iOS only; available in French) helps you keep track of symptoms, treatments and notes to discuss with your healthcare provider.
• Jack Imaging is a free tool that allows you to manage your medical imaging records online. View, upload and/or share X-rays, CT and MRI scans with your family or care team directly and never lose your imaging records again.

• MyMedical helps you keep your records organized, track and chart test results, and keep critical information on hand all the time.   
• Chemo Brain Doc Notes provides yet another free tool to help you remember what you need to ask your healthcare provider, and save time in recording and managing your notes.
• Better offers a personalized health assistant to help you navigate the complicated healthcare system. They have partnered with Mayo Clinic to provide easy access to world-class care. Their free app can be accessed through the iTunes store, here. 
• intake.me was founded by Darla Brown, a regular volunteer at the Cancer Support Community Benjamin Center, in order to streamline the patient intake experience. Intake.me will go live early 2015 and you can sign up to be notified, here. 

Find Clinical Trials

• Cure Launcher provides a free, personalized service to match you with an appropriate clinical trial. Visit their website or call 1-800-488-6632 to speak with a representative.
• Clinical Trial Seeker App: Get cancer trial information quickly and conveniently sourced from the NIH database. Search by location, disease type, treatment, phase of trial, trial sponsor, age, gender and/or keyword.

• Cleveland Clinic Cancer Trials provides a real-time database directly on your mobile phone so you can stay up to date on Cleveland Clinic's 130+ clinical trials for cancer patients.
• NCI Clinical Trials
• ClinicalTrials.gov 

Pill Reminder / Drug Information and Prices

• Rxmind Me is a reminder for your medications, vitamins and supplements.
• Pocket Pharm provides drug information, medication organizer and interaction checker.
• Epocrates is a clinical reference guide available in your pocket.

• GoodRX helps you save money on prescription drugs by providing price comparisons and coupons to local pharmacies. Find and print their pharmacy coupons so you don’t end up paying more than you need to.
• iPharmacy Drug Guide & Pill ID helps you keep track of your medication regiment by combining a pharmacy discount card with a medication educational resource. The app helps identify prescription drugs and provides information about dosage, warnings and contraindications. 

• Med Helper reminds you to take medication, keep track of your appointments and more 

Managing Side Effects and Rest and Relaxation

• My PearlPoint Cancer Side Effects Helper offers nutritional guidance and practical tips to help survivors maintain their strength and just feel better.
• Calm - meditate, sleep, and relax. 

Support and Online Networking

• CaringBridge
• Treatment Diaries provides an outlet for anonymous, shared healing.

• IHadCancer.com: join tens of thousands of survivors and supporters who understand what you are going through. Search by location, cancer type, age and gender.

Breast Cancer - specific: 

• Breast Cancer Diagnosis Guide provides answers to your diagnosis questions, articles about your particular cancer type and guides you through unfamiliar medical terminology. The app also claims to help you understand your diagnostic reports (free for iOS).
• Cancer Coach has information on breast cancer and treatment, with a journal function allowing type and voice input (free for iOS and Android);
• iEat for Life: Breast Cancer helps you maintain a healthy diet while undergoing breast cancer treatment. The app contains a database with nutritional values and cooking tips for countless food items. It also includes research studies that cite certain foods as being beneficial for the prevention or healing of breast cancer (free for iOS).

• Breast Cancer: Beyond the Shock is a support-group app for diagnosed patients as well as their caretakers. The app contains information about breast cancer and connects you with others who have gone or are going through the same thing you are (free for iOS).

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Thank you for reading and please share your favorite online tools with us by commenting in the space below or by sending an e-mail to info@cancersupportcommunitybenjmaincenter.org

What Not to Say to a Cancer Patient at the Holidays

CSC is here to help! Do you have a family member, friend, or coworker who has cancer and you are wondering what to say? Stop by CSC to pick up a copy of our "How to Be a Good Friend" pamphlet - it is small enough to fit in your pocket - and is a great resource on the do's and don'ts of what to say!

Did you read this recent CBSNEWS article on this subject? Check it out below.

11/24/14 by Jessica Firger, CBSNEWS

For the estimated 1.6 million Americans diagnosed with cancer each year, making it to the holidays can feel like a personal triumph and a huge blessing. However, for many cancer patients the big family dinners and holiday parties that are part of the festive season can come with an element of dread. Nearly everyone who has gone through treatment for a life-threatening illness will tell you that when surrounded by friends and family -- both distant and close relatives -- there's likely to be at least one guest with "foot-in-mouth disease."

Dana Manciagli, a stage 4 breast cancer survivor, recalled how she threw a holiday party in 2002 to celebrate coming through the end of her treatment that year. 

"A woman walked up to me and said, 'How can you be so happy? You have cancer,'" Manciagli told CBS News. "I was surprised she didn't wear black to the party."

Manciagli recently lost her identical twin sister to breast cancer, and over the years the two kept a running list of things you should never say to a cancer patient, sort of like the Letterman Top 10, she said. Read the rest of this article.

Why This Yoga Teacher Of 15 Years Takes Beginner Yoga Classes

This guest post by Emily Burg originally appeared on Yogi Living.

I have been practicing yoga for 15 years, and teaching for five, and when I attend a yoga class for my personal practice, it is a Level 1 or restorative or gentle yoga class.

For most of my time practicing yoga, I thought that the purpose of the practice was to ascend.  To develop the ability to perform ever more complex asana. To practice more often.  To get sweatier on the mat.  To be able to hold a pose longer.

I had it all wrong.

All of those years of yoga practice experience didn’t make me a more advanced yogi, because in yoga, being able to stay connected to our beginner’s mind is what actually demonstrates our mastery.  One of the greatest challenges in yoga is to go as deep and practice with as much focus, commitment and intent in a basic yoga practice, as you would in a Level 3 all inversions and arm balances class.

This was nearly impossible for me once I became a yoga teacher, though of course when I reflect back on my teacher training, the focus was never was never to turn us into the most flexible yoginis but rather to make us the most grounded, centered and wise guides for our students.  Yet I felt that as a teacher I had to demonstrate an elevated practice, attend upper-level classes and never require an adjustment, because, as a teacher, I should have a perfect practice.  This was in spite of being a teacher who instructed my students that there is no such thing as a perfect practice, and that the core of the practice is learning to come to acceptance with whatever version of ourselves shows up on the mat each day.

Yoga, which had been a central part of my life for so many years, was no longer a source of refuge, inspiration, expression, creativity and release.  Instead going to the mat as a teacher felt like work: I was either unable to shut off teacher mode or, I was so busy watching how the teacher taught the class, looking for ideas and cues that could feed my own work as a teacher, I lost the ability to stay present in the moment as a student, I lost the unifying connection between my breath, body, and mind that yoga enables — the reason I came to and stayed on the mat for so many years.  I lost my student’s mind, my beginner’s mind.

A combination of missing my yoga practice, and missing the opportunity to be a student, led me to reconsider my yoga practice altogether and to return to yoga as if I were a new student.  Now only attending level 1, gentle or restorative classes, I approach each class as though it’s my first time on the mat, and in a way, it is: I am traveling back in time, reconnecting with the beginner yogini I was once, and in many ways I still am, now in the form of an established yogini and teacher: a woman who comes to the mat stressed and anxious, overworked and under slept, seeking solace, grounding, insight and connection to an ancient lineage of wisdom and wellness.

About Emily Lauren BurgEmily (aka Guru Em) is a former investment banker and strategic analyst turned yoga and meditation teacher. She uses mindfulness and wellness practices to address stress, anxiety, and change and help her students experience wholeness. To learn more or connect with Emily visit her website, Guru Em.