Patricia Steer

We passed too often in the night of this disease, Pat Steer and I.

We made plans that sometimes turned out too hard to keep.

One of our plans was to get together at the Creekside, to talk books and dogs, but she got sicker, and I was suddenly very sick. We planned for phone calls that fell through and for my driving over for sit-down talks at her condo that I never had enough time for.

I wanted to have her tell me how to to cope with a disease that neither of us wanted.

She lived with stage IV rectal cancer for 8 years. After five years of early stage colon cancer, my cancer has returned in an unexpected way, and I desperately want some of those eight years. What a special gift that would be. Read the rest of this entry »

How is greed potentially impacting chemo drug shortages? This week Fight Colorectal Cancer will be closely monitoring testimony at the Senate Commerce Committee about this disturbing practice. Below MSNBC has an eye opening piece on the topic that a Congressional investigation by Chairman John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has been investigating for better part of a year.

Maryland Congressman Cummings says he launched the probe after receiving a letter from University of Maryland women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese, who was having trouble getting medication to treat her son’s leukemia. The lawmaker is proposing reforms to deter price-gouging and make the drug supply chain safer.

Shortages have forced doctors to postpone chemotherapy and surgeries or provide less effective treatment and in some cases have even been blamed for deaths.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Please note: the hearing will be webcast live via the Senate Commerce Committee website. Refresh the Commerce Committee homepage 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start time to automatically begin streaming the webcast.

 ”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….”   –The Declaration of Independence

Although I might want to edit Thomas Jefferson’s words to say “…all men and women and children are created equal,” it seems like we all can unify around the rights of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. ”

Each and everyone of you in the Fight Colorectal Cancer community are striving every day to uphold every person’s ability to live fully no matter where you are on cancer’s journey, to regain liberty from worry or pain or illness, and to pursue happiness.

We salute you all–whether you’re sitting in 90-degree heat on a roadside determined to enjoy the parade despite side effects from chemo; whether you’re surrounded by friends and family at a boisterous picnic, or you’re quietly observing the holiday by nursing someone in a hushed hospital room; or whether you don’t know what comes next but that you find joy, in this moment, by hugging a child tight and gazing up with awe at the fleeting beauty of fireworks in the sky.

And especially we salute–and thank from the bottom of our hearts–all those men and women serving in the military across the world to protect our freedoms and our Rights.

The Declaration of Independence ends with a phrase that, I think, sums up the spirit of this amazing Fight Colorectal Cancer community:

“….We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Affordable Care Act, including its individual health insurance mandate, is constitutional. The Court did not uphold the individual mandate on the grounds that Congress can use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. Rather, the Court agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he or she refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power.

Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that requires states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

The Court’s ruling does not end the debate over health care reform, which will figure dominantly in the November elections.

The Court’s landmark decision means that more Americans will continue to have access to colorectal cancer screening, and that cancer patients will not need to fear losing their insurance or being denied coverage.

Fight Colorectal Cancer will continue to work with Congress and the Administration on implementation of the law, including revising a section of the law that currently holds individuals liable for cost sharing when a colorectal cancer screening also involves the removal of polyps.

Visit our Call to Action Center – keep the conversation happening.

Chris Adams at Fight Colorectal Cancer's 2012 Call-on Congress

Written by: Christopher P. Adams, Ph.D.*

Chris Adams, one of Fight Colorectal Cancer’s research advocates, shares his thoughts about the results of a large breast cancer trial presented at the 2012 ASCO in Chicago, and aspects of the regulatory process. Thank YOU Chris!

On Sunday June 3 2012, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago, Dr Kimberly Blackwell from the Duke Cancer Institute, got on stage in front of over 10,000 doctors, researchers and worldwide media representatives to present initial results from the EMILIA trial.** The trial looked at the safety and effectiveness of a novel drug for a particular type of breast cancer. Despite its obvious applicability to breast cancer, the colorectal cancer community and the larger cancer community can learn a number of important things from EMILIA.

Read the rest of this entry »