Tag Archives: Health

Self-Care Challenge #1

April 16, 2018Cancer, Health and WellnessBlogs, Health, positive approach, Self-Care, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

Last week I posted about why I was beginning these challenges, and why I suggest downloading the app from Health Storylines to chronicle your progress. I am hoping that you will join me in these challenges, and comment here or on my social media pages to share your own insight, success, or thoughts about them.

My First Self-Care Challenge

The basic idea here is that we can use these challenges in our lives as part of an ongoing health plan. This isn’t about doing it one month and then moving on, but rather building upon these challenges by continuing to incorporate them into our daily lives. I’m choosing to begin with something that should be simple enough, but I think might be more broadly relevant than any of us realize. For the next few weeks, I’m going to diligently work on this task: Continue reading Self-Care Challenge #1 →

Upcoming: Self-Care Challenges

April 12, 2018Cancer, Health and WellnessCancer, communication, Education, Health, positive approach, Self-Care, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

One of the most important aspects of cancer treatment is self-care. As with any chronic condition that requires ongoing medical attention, cancer patients need to take charge of certain aspects of their own lives in order to optimize their success and live the healthiest way possible. Fortunately, there are many tools out there that can help, especially in this age of the ubiquitous mobile device.

Since my own diagnosis of Stage IV lung cancer back in November of 2014, I have made it my mission to share my story and hopefully help other patients along the way. I’ve clearly had my own ups and downs, and in the ensuing years, I have managed to learn a thing or two about the process of treatment. Being a vocal advocate on multiple forums, I have been fortunate enough to connect with a wide variety of patients and caregivers, as well as various medical professionals and individuals in related support industries. Sometimes I reach out to them, sometimes they reach out to me. Continue reading Upcoming: Self-Care Challenges →

Another New Beginning

March 2, 2018Cancer, Health and Wellnessadenocarcinoma, Blogs, Cancer, chemo diaries, Chemotherapy, Health, Lung Cancer, positive approach, Positivity, Science, toxins, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

Well, it’s time for another needle. I’d been successfully avoiding a lot of these for the past six-ish months, but the afatinib pill I had been taking simply wasn’t working the way we needed it to. (Which is to say, it did not stop the cancer from spreading, much less reduce its presence.) So, on this uncharacteristically rainy Southern California day, I commuted through a maze of side streets to avoid morning rush hour traffic on my way downtown to the university hospital where I am to receive today’s infusion. It’s a far cry from the cozy satellite clinic I had been accustomed to up in Pasadena. I’ve spent the better part of 90 minutes waiting for things to be prepared since I checked in; I’ve wandered the maze of the hospital, searching out a paltry offering of snacks in the lower-level cafeteria and the free coffee in the main waiting room, sitting in various rooms and surfing the free Wi-Fi (but unable to stream Flint Town on Netflix, much to my chagrin).

Here, in the Day Hospital, as it is called, the vibe is wholly different than the spa-like atmosphere of my old chemo haunt. While this is certainly clean and bright, it feels like a hospital. There is nothing aesthetically pleasing about the large room cordoned off by sliding curtains. A few windows along one wall allow a tiny amount of natural light in, but they may be closed off by curtains at any time. Yet the reception staff seems bright and friendly.

The drug I am getting today — ado-trastuzumab emtansine, or Kadcyla — is not a traditional chemotherapy, and there have been some weird holdups in getting it properly scheduled. In part, this is because my use will be slightly off-label. My insurance company refused to approve it — but they also would not deny it, leaving me in a strange limbo where other plans were difficult to make. The hospital pharmacy has been working with the drug manufacturer to cover the costs in case insurance ultimately denied coverage, and we are moving forward with the understanding that, somehow, the medication will get paid for. These concoctions are so expensive that it is unreasonable to expect that patients could actually afford to pay out of pocket, but somehow the system works to cover these costs most of the time. The trick is figuring out how. I am three weeks delayed getting in for this new treatment, which hopefully will be drastically more effective than the pill I had been taking. At least the bar there isn’t very high.

Continue reading Another New Beginning →

The Overstayed Welcome

February 26, 2018Cancer, Health and Wellness, ReasonBlogs, body, Cancer, chemo diaries, Chemotherapy, communication, Education, Fear, Health, Labels, language, misinformation, Narrative, positive approach, Positivity, Reason, Science, Sense, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

We all know — or we should all know — that lung cancer is one of the biggest killers in our society. With an estimated average of 433 people dying every day from some form of this disease, there is no question as to why it is considered such a horrifying diagnosis. Lung cancer kills more than any other cancer, and more than its three closest competitors in the cancer arena combined. If there were cancer cage matches, lung cancer would win virtually every time based on the sheer volume of its devastation and mayhem. Yet, in spite of receiving only a fraction of the research funding that other cancers get, a surprising number of treatments have emerged to help lung cancer patients outlive their initial prognosis.

But you have lung cancer! You’re expected to die. And, by the way, you’re expected to die quickly (and brutally). That is what the common narrative tells us.

Lung cancer treatment has made amazing bounds over the past decade. For a growing number of patients, living with Stage IV lung cancer is no longer an immediate death sentence, if a death sentence at all. For some of them, especially those diagnosed “earlier” in the Stage IV spectrum, while there are still a few months to alternate between treatments to find what works, or for those lucky enough to have an actionable mutation, even this advanced type of lung cancer can be treated as a chronic illness instead of a fatal one. Earlier and better diagnoses have led to younger and healthier patients having a chance to engage in this challenge before their cancer has beaten them down from within, and they have brought a new level of perseverance to the process. Continue reading The Overstayed Welcome →

Radiation and Me, A Love Story

February 11, 2018Cancer, Health and WellnessBlogs, body, Cancer, Fear, Health, Lung Cancer, Radiation, Reason, Science, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

It all started with a pain in my back. I was a mess. Every day, the pain grew and spread until it ran down my entire left leg and shot up into my chest. What I had hoped might be a simple pinched nerve turned out to be the result of a new metastasis in the muscle of my lower back, conveniently pressing gently up against the sciatic nerve like a feather made of barbed wire attached to a cattle prod.

To treat this nasty beast, the only practical solution was to zap it with radiation — something that I could barely wait to begin doing. By the time this was presented as an option, I was in such agony that surgery would have been appealing. Radiation, by comparison to virtually anything else, sounded like a relief. Continue reading Radiation and Me, A Love Story →

Support Where It Is Due

February 2, 2018Cancer, Health and WellnessBlogs, communication, Education, Health, Lung Cancer, Support, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

As a lung cancer patient, I certainly receive a fair amount of emotional support. Maybe some of it is more well-intentioned than helpful, maybe sometimes I don’t get what I really need, but I know it is there and I am ever-grateful for it. But as a patient, it is easy to find support in many ways, through friends and family, through community, through blogs and online forums and in-person support groups. Patients are obvious recipients of support, people who clearly need it for what we are going through. But there is another class of individual who carries an equal or higher burden and is consistently overlooked in the need for support: the caregiver. Continue reading Support Where It Is Due →

Critical Thinking and Cancer Headlines

December 17, 2017Cancer, Health and WellnessBlogs, Cancer, communication, Education, Health, journalism, Lies, Reason, Science, SenseJeffrey Poehlmann

I have a predilection for skepticism, especially with regard to hyperbolic medical claims about cancer treatment. Since my diagnosis, I have received many suggestions for things to try and I have been pointed to countless articles about amazing new treatments (and plenty of old ones). Each time, there is a flutter of hope, and I want very badly to see or hear a new piece of information that is going to change the cancer treatment paradigm forever. I think that most patients and caregivers feel that way. Yet, the vast majority of information on “new” or “revolutionary” treatments being passed around via the Internet seems to fall somewhere between misrepresentation and outright fabrication.

Over the past months, I have written a number of short articles on this subject for LungCancer.net — here are links to a few of them:

https://lungcancer.net/living/sifting-c-word-headlines/?utm_source=notifications

https://lungcancer.net/living/fighting-misinformation-fake-news/

https://lungcancer.net/living/health-claims-water-internet/

As longtime readers know, I try to encourage critical thinking and hope to present a good example of that approach to information on cancer treatment options. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read and share my series of Wellness Warrior posts. (You can type the phrase in the search box for easy access.)

It takes a concerted effort, sometimes, to cut through the quagmire of nonsense out there. But if we all make that effort, together, to read beyond headlines before reacting and to vet our sources before we share, it will help to reshape the whole narrative around cancer as we know it.

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Spoiler Alert: Side-Effects Show Up

September 25, 2017Cancer, Health and Wellnessadenocarcinoma, Blogs, body, Cancer, chemo diaries, Chemotherapy, Education, Fear, Health, Lung Cancer, positive approach, Positivity, Targeted Therapy, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

It has been over two weeks since I began taking my new drug, afatinib. Over two weeks of feeling good, feeling like the chemo has been thoroughly flushed from my system even as I have diligently taken these new pills, feeling the best that I have in three years. I have been keeping a journal this time, chronicling how my body is responding each day, trying to pave the way for a better understanding of how to live with this new treatment. For the first week, anyway, it almost seemed like it was going to be too easy.

There are two weeks of video updates on my Patreon feed, talking about how great I feel and wondering how bad the side effects will be once they really kick in. I had been prepped by my oncologist that it was very likely that I would experience worse side effects than I had with the chemo I had been taking. This was based on how well I tolerated pemetrexed, the chemotherapy drug that had kept my cancer at bay for so long, but not so much on patients in general having a particularly tough time on afatinib. Which is not to suggest that I expected a walk in the proverbial park with this new drug.

Still, the first week was amazing. It was almost like I was taking nothing at all. Sure, there was some digestive stuff going on, but nothing outside of the realm of what I would have been used to in a previous life if I decided to live off of bean burritos for a few weeks. And I love a good burrito, so it would be worth it. But by day eight, I realized that the side-effects of the drug were presenting themselves quite visibly. Continue reading Spoiler Alert: Side-Effects Show Up →

Interview With Radiation Therapist Turned Stage IV Lung Cancer Patient

September 19, 2017Cancer, Health and WellnessBlogs, Cancer, chemo diaries, Chemotherapy, communication, Education, Health, Lung Cancer, misinformation, positive approach, Positivity, Reason, Science, SenseJeffrey Poehlmann

I meet a lot of interesting people through my lung cancer support group. Most of them are on some form of chemotherapy. A few have tried immunotherapy. Some targeted drugs have been in the mix, along with surgery and radiation. The one commonality between them is their optimistic perseverance. But it isn’t rooted in blind optimism or faith — the whole point of the group is to share perspectives and experiences, gathering useful knowledge in the process. We all come with our own perspectives that inform our decisions and influence how we share, most of us having begun as (more or less surprised) patients that have evolved into advocates. Once in a while, a patient arrives with multiple perspectives built-in, hardwired to see her situation from both sides of the exam table.

And if I’m really lucky, she lets me interview her for my podcast: