Pat Steer

We are glad to welcome advocate Pat Steer to the Fight Colorectal Cancer Research and Treatment News.  She’s been living with stage IV rectal cancer since 2004.  A writer, she’s blogs about her life with cancer, training her beloved dogs, and her passion for good food at Life Out Loud.

Since my cancer diagnosis in 2004, my life has been full of choice and decisions. Cancer forces you to prioritize. Some days, it has seemed like cancer and treatment were calling all the shots in my schedule, changing my plans, and forcing decisions I didn’t want to have to make.

But I’ve made a few choices in the last eight years where I didn’t let cancer force my hand. I train and show dogs, and that’s very important to me. Early on, I decided to make attending my favorite dog shows a priority. I kept up my now-25-year tradition of camping with friends at a local show circuit. I entered a special event dog show held on New Year’s weekend, 2005 – three shows in 48 hours that wore me out, but was so worth the effort.  I covered Westminster in 2008 through 2010 for my column.

All of those decisions meant that sometimes I prioritized dog shows in spite of my treatment schedule. My oncologist, who once told me “I want you to live your life,” carefully moved my treatments around to accommodate the things I really wanted to do. After all, what good is surviving cancer if you can’t do the things you love? Read the rest of this entry »

Difficulty managing the cost of their cancer care stressed three out of four patients, according to a study recently completed by the Cancer Support Community.  In addition two out of three said their health care team didn’t discuss financial aspects of care with them.

In an effort to help patients struggling with cancer expense, the Cancer Support Community has just released Frankly Speaking about Cancer: Coping with the Cost of Care.

You can order a free print copy of the book, read sections online or download it. Read the rest of this entry »

With Valentine’s Day on its way, I was intrigued to see lots of information in the media about how eating chocolate could prevent colon cancer.

The headlines were almost as enticing as unwrapping a large bar of Godiva with hazelnuts.

• Eating chocolate can stave off bowel cancer, say scientists.
• Chocolate shown to protect against colon cancer: study
• Study Shows Chocolate Prevents Colon Cancer

As the news spread like chocolate melting in August from a medical journal article to a news release to online media to blogs to Twitter, I didn’t know whether to consider the rats who were fed cocoa for 12 weeks and had changes in their intestinal tract or that having diabetes increases the risk of dying from colorectal cancer by 30 percent or convincing evidence from the World Cancer Research Fund that maintaining a healthy weight is linked to lowering colon and rectal cancer risk. Read the rest of this entry »

When Avastin is added to the combination of Xeloda and irinotecan as an initial treatment for advanced colorectal cancer, the treatment is equally effective as Avastin with FOLFIRI.

But side effects are more difficult.

After a randomized clinical trial comparing Avastin with XELIRI (Xeloda, irinotecan) to Avastin with FOLFIRI (5-FU, leucovorin, irinotecan), researchers concluded that excessive side effects made using the XELIRI combination unwise. Read the rest of this entry »

Moscone Center

We’re getting ready for the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium next week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Kim Ryan, Nancy Roach, and I will be there checking out the latest colon and rectal cancer prevention and treatment research and talking with leaders in the colorectal cancer field.

Colon and rectal cancer is featured on Saturday, January 21, but we’ll also be looking at research results for cancers in the upper digestive tract, liver, and pancreas on Thursday and Friday, visiting exhibits, and meeting with members of the Fight Colorectal Cancer Medical Advisory Board.

• Watch for our reports from the Symposium on the Fight Colorectal Cancer Research and Treatment News.
• Follow our tweets on Twitter @FightCRC.
• In February, join us and Dr. Dan Sargent from the Mayo Clinic for a Report from the 2012 GI Cancers Symposium webinar. Read the rest of this entry »