Cancer & Careers West Coast Conference

The Cancer & Careers West Coast Conference on Work & Cancer is this Saturday in LA! This FREE daylong event will explore the complexities of balancing treatment/recovery with employment and is open to patients, survivors, caregivers, healthcare professionals and anyone else touched by cancer.
There are still spots open, so register today! http://www.cancerandcareers.org/…/even…/westcoast-conference

Doctors Should Listen to Patient Instincts

Check out this post from The New York Times Well Blog by Tara Parker-Pope. Parker-Pope shares the results of a recent study that indicates that the way that patients describe how they feel to their doctors is possibly a better predictor of their health than objective tests. Read more here.

Cancer Survivors: Together We Are Less Alone

To read the article by Barbara Tako, the author of "Cancer Survivorship Coping Tools", click here.
Barbara is a survivor of breast cancer and melanoma.

Share your story or leave a comment below.  We would love to hear from you!

HOPE AND CANCER: FEATHERS AND ALL

By Julia Forth

“It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings.”

Rebecca Solnit
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
 

Writer, historian and activist, Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, originally published in 2004, has been reissued this year.  Although a book exploring political activism, Ms. Solnit’s articulation of what hope is and is not has a correlation to the idea of hope as experienced by people with cancer and their caregivers.  Hope is something that the Cancer Support Community (CSC) advocated for cancer patients and their families back in 1982 when it began as The Wellness Community and when cancer was mostly dread and death.  Dr. Harold Benjamin and his wife Harriet, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1970s, founded CSC with its free psychosocial services of group support, classes, social activities and education.  The Benjamins knew firsthand the despair that cancer can bring and claimed a space for hope within the arena of life-threatening illness.  The seventies and early eighties were not often times of positive outcomes for cancer patients, or for open discussion of the anxieties that cancer brings to everyone affected by it.

Rebecca Solnit, also the author of Men Explain Things to Me, brings her journalistic eye, deep intellect and activist nature to this topic when she suggests a link between hope and action.  Emily Dickenson wrote, “Hope” is the thing with feathers –  that perches in the soul”.   A true subtlety of life, often lost in the blunt upset of cancer, is that hope stays on the ground with us and lifts us, everything together.  Hope is often thought of as something that safeguards us from gritty reality but, in Rebecca Solnit’s words, it is about “broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act (emphasis added).”

In 2016, treatments have improved, people are living longer and better, and the word “cancer” need not be whispered.  But, no one would deny that cancer does, at the very least, bring anxieties and sometimes a loss of hope.  Dr. Benjamin’s Patient Active Concept, revolutionary in 1982 and still relevant today, specifically encourages cancer patients and their families to partner with their physicians, to not be passive victims during the course of their disease but to take back control—in short, to be active in their own lives, to be active in hope and to welcome the possibility of change. 

Ms. Solnit talks about hope as containing “openings.”  Hope, as providing an opening for action, is exactly what CSC encourages.  Research now shows that CSC’s services of support and outlook of hope can enhance survivorship.  As cancer patients and families look for places to connect with others and for places inside themselves where the “thing with feathers” perches, CSC remains a place of hope.  CSC was created as a vessel for possibilities; it does not promise that everything will be fine but rather that life, at the very least, will perhaps be more vibrant in choosing to live as a hope-fueled, active participant, no matter the outcome. 


Julia Forth is the Executive Director of Cancer Support Community Benjamin Center (CSC)  founded in 1982 as The Wellness Community in Los Angeles and part of an international network of affiliates that offer the highest quality social and emotional support for people with cancer and their families.  To find a CSC in your area, please visit www.cancersupportcommunity.org or to learn more about CSC Benjamin Center in Los Angeles, visit www.cancersupportcommunitybenjamincenter.org or call 310-314-2555.

New Research from Cancer Support Community

Cancer Support Community was at the American Psychosocial Oncology Society's Annual Conference in San Diego, March 3-5, 2016.  

Below is our Program Director, Shannon La Cava, PsyD, (far left) with CSC Headquarter's Vice President of Program Development & Delivery, Vicky Kennedy, LCSW.

To learn more about the APOS conference, visit their conference website.  
Read more about the Cancer Experience Registry here and about CSC's research here. 
 

Refined and Classic: The True Gift Nature Gave Me

Things don't change. You change your way of looking, that's all.

-Carlos Castaneda

When you look at the natural world around you, the first thing you might focus on are the popular choices-a lush pink rose with iridescent drops of dew decorating its petals or a picturesque sunset that turns the sky a painterly shade of red, grey and white. If you've never really looked at the striations of a weathered tree branch or the rough texture of a sun bleached rock you're missing out on the part of nature that reveals its beauty in an alternative way. In French this type of unusual loveliness is called "Jolie laide" or "pretty ugly".

There have been many famous people who've utilized these traits to their advantage, whether it was playing up a distinctive nose like Barbra Streisand, dark skin and a severe haircut like Grace Jones or a rough, but sensuous face, that's simultaneously soft and hard, like Tom Hardy. Fortunately as our society becomes more inclusive and diverse this definition of attractiveness will replace our traditional standard that used to lean towards perfection and conformity and eschew the different and unique.

One day after returning to the bus stop in front of 74th Street Elementary School, a school I subbed at as a "Special Education Trainee Assistant" from January to March I noticed a tree next to the bus bench with a series of large mushrooms growing out of it. Ordinarily I wouldn't notice something like that, but ever since I was diagnosed with Stage II A Breast Cancer in 2010 and had to view my altered body in the mirror daily, I've become more attuned to things I might have ignored because they looked slightly grotesque and unsightly. Now they fascinate me and I study them enough to see their allure.

As I examined the balletic way the exterior of the dark brown and white mushrooms clung to the rustic, splintery trunk of the tree I couldn't help being inspired by the palette of gray and brown. I took a series of photos of this natural art piece, over a period of time, and shared them with the class I was working with at the school. Despite having to leave early, because I was still recovering from kidney stone surgery, I left a xeroxed copy of one of my photos of the tree for the teacher and wore an outfit inspired by the tree.

Transferring the gray and brown color scheme to clothing, I coordinated a gray wool pea coat over a gray tie-front DKNY cardigan, light gray Sharagano button-down blouse and vintage Levi's flares. I then accessorized my outfit with a beige lace and floral turban and beige Guess sneakers. While coordinating this outfit I became a designer, and utilized something that influenced me (the mushrooms attached to the tree), a color scheme that complimented my skin tone (gray and beige), and I found a way to reinterpret and update a pair of 1970's flares by pairing them with a contemporary coat, cardigan, blouse and sneakers.

After I recovered and returned to the class, the teacher told me the class took a mini walking field trip to examine the tree and she taught a lesson about "the cycle of life" which included "producers" (green plants), "metamorphosis" and "photosynthesis", "consumers" and "decomposers". She also told the students to read Fungi by Mary Kay Carson, The Web of Life by Melvin Berger and The Producers by Melissa Stewart.

Throughout this whole journey the main lesson that stayed with me was how reliable and comforting nature is for rejuvenating the creative spirit and soul in times of despair.

Turning Your Pet Into a Therapy Dog

 


Studies have found that spending time with a pet offers many therapeutic benefits including reduced anxiety and depression, lower blood pressure, and increased levels of endorphin, the feel good hormone.  Read about the wonderful benefits of pet therapy and how Jane Brody turned her pet dog, Max, into a certified therapy dog in this article at the New York Times Well Blog.

Do you want to learn more about pet therapy?  Come join us, March 18th at noon, for an educational workshop on How a Pet Can Provide Comfort and Support with Mitch Golant, PHD, FAPOS, and meet his Pet Partners certified therapy dog, Luna!  Dr. Golant will share how pets can provide enhanced support in working with patients and families.  We hope to see you there!  For more information please visit our educational workshops page here. 

Why Cancer Is 'Gone' Discourse Doesn't Help Cancer Patients

December 7, 20154:50 PM ET       

Barbara J. King

 

 

Photo by Matt Rourke/AP

 

Read article at:

 

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/12/07/458824962/why-cancer-is-gone-discourse-doesn-t-help-cancer-patients?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social

 

Cancer Moonshot - Is Now Finally the Time?

 

Kim Thiboldeaux, CEO of the Cancer Support Community, recently published a post urging us to commit to making 2016 the year that we finally combat cancer. With the advancement in cancer research and treatment, the passing of new legislatures, and the support from public figures like President Obama and Vice President Biden, there is no better time than now to aim for the moon. 

In her post, Ms. Thiboldeaux wrote, “In 1971, President Nixon declared a War on Cancer and signed the National Cancer Act of 1971 . So why, 45 years later, is curing cancer the nation's new moonshot? We are seeing more targeted therapies, less toxic therapies, and a wider range of second and third line treatment options when other approaches fail.  But back to the question, why now? For starters, as both the President and the Vice President have stated - this is personal. Last year, the Vice President lost his son Beau, age 46, to cancer, and in 1995 President Obama lost his mother to ovarian cancer. And as Vice President Biden wrote: "It's personal for me. But it's also personal for nearly every American, and millions of people around the world. We all know someone who has had cancer, or is fighting to beat it. They're our family, friends, and co-workers." At times, these kinds of personal experiences - and perhaps the great tragedy of losing a child - become the drivers and motivators to muster the will to accomplish great things."

Read the full article at Huffington Post.