How do you deal with "unhelpful" comments from others?

Recently Providence Centralia Hospital's Director of Mission, Cathy Johnston and Providence Regional Cancer System consultant, Cobie Whitten were interviewed for an article in The Spokesman-Review titled "Offering comfort."

It's a great article, so we wanted to share. To read the article in full, click this link >>

Here's an excerpt:

Q. When I had breast cancer, several people told me about their mothers or sisters or friends who had difficult chemotherapy experiences or who died from their cancer. It was not helpful. Why do people do that?

A. “People respond out of their own fear of cancer and fear of death. Often their comments are a panic reaction,” said Cobie Whitten, a psycho-oncology consultant who works with cancer patients in Olympia.

People may be stunned to learn their friend’s news and their reactions default to what is familiar, instead of what is helpful. Many people still, wrongly, believe that a cancer diagnosis is synonymous with death, Whitten said.

And people may wonder what it means for them. Will they have to be a caregiver? Or will they lose their friend to this awful disease?

They manifest their own discomfort with inappropriate comments, instead of simply saying, “I am sorry this is happening to you.”

When Catherine Johnston confided in a colleague that she was taking several weeks off for cancer treatment, the woman replied, “I have news, too. I’m getting a new job!” Johnston stood up and left the room.

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have advice to add? Would you like to share your own story? Please feel free to leave us a note in the comments section.

Cancer 101: A new resource for everyone

Cancer 101: Basics and beyond

Providence Regional Cancer System invites patients at all stages of treatment to attend a complimentary dinner event with our team of cancer experts.

From diagnosis to treatment and more, you'll learn what to expect as you navigate the path ahead. Resources will be available, plus time to ask questions.

Bring a guest! RSVP at www.provregister.org or by calling 360.412.8949

Providence Centralia Hospital
Basement Classroom
Monday, Feb. 6, 6-8 pm

Providence St. Peter Hospital
2nd Floor, 200 Rooms
Wednesday, Feb. 8, 6-8 pm

Celebrating one year of blogging...

A year ago we officially launched our blog. Although we had been blogging for a few months prior to telling anyone it's only been a year that our patients have actually known about the blog. In fact, in just one year over 4,000 people have visited our blog! We're honored that so many people have found our information both helpful and encouraging.

In the spirit of New Years Resolutions we'd like to direct you back to some of our favorite "life changes" articles. And as always, leave us a note in the comments if you want us to cover something new.

• Quit Smoking: As a patient undergoing cancer treatment the effects of both first hand and second-hand smoke are clearly document, and it's not good. Check out this article from our very own Dr. Harris for more information >>
• Exercise more to help your cancer treatment: Last year Laura, an occupational therapis at Providence who specializes in lymphedema, oncology rehabilitation and manual therapy talked about exercising during cancer treatment. Read more about the positive effects here >>
• Change your diet, recover energy: When Dr. Sui wrote about taking charge of your cancer-related fatigue he sparked a great dialogue about changing your diet. Read the reader response to his article here >> 
• Learn how to cope with the fear your cancer will come back: Dr. Whitten's two part article covered not just understanding the fear your cancer will come back but also provided five strategies for coping. Read more here >>

Profiling the beginning of Providence Integrative Cancer Care

Recently our very own Rosemary Spyhalsky, Nurse Coordinator for the Providence Integrative Cancer Care Program was profiled by the Oncology Nursing Society’s Special Interest Group for Complementary & Integrative Therapies.

As a passionate advocate of integrative cancer care, Rosemary is board certified in both oncology and holistic nursing. While the focus of the article is meant to guide Rosemary’s peers in starting their own integrative cancer care programs, we thought it was important to profile some of Rosemary’s main points:

The history of our program
At the time when the idea first came to Rosemary to pursue offering body-mind-spirit care to patients, this was a relatively new concept. Some of the major cancer centers offered services such as acupuncture, massage, yoga, etc, but there was nothing like this in the any of the cancer centers located in the South Sound, and the medical community was very skeptical about the benefits of such services. After 3 years of research and work behind the scenes, the program got off the ground in 2007 with oncology massage, yoga, a nutrition class, and acupuncture. Naturopathy was added a year later.

The benefits of connecting the complementary services to medical cancer treatments
According to the National Institute of Health almost half of all Americans use at least one complementary and alternative medicine in addition to their regular medical care, but most do not tell their providers. Having the Integrative Cancer Care Program embedded into Providence Regional Cancer System is a valuable resource for patients. Patients have convenient access to complementary services to utilize in conjunction with their medical cancer treatments and may share more openly with physicians about other treatments they are using if they see such services offered within the cancer clinic. Services offered are safe to use in conjunction with conventional medical care.

The importance of licensure
Establishing requirements for providers was assisted by the fact that in Washington state naturopathy, massage therapy and acupuncture can all be licensed through the Department of Health. Dietitians are certified through the same regulatory body, and also obtain a national certification. In the case of yoga, there is no licensure, so certification through a respected national certification body was a requirement. In addition, when and where possible, specialized oncology training has been sought for providers.

To find out more about the Providence Integrative Cancer Care program please visit the integrative care website at provcancer.org Once there, you can read more about our program, services, and the benefits of complementary care or integrative medicine. You can also view a list of local and national resources by clicking on the Resources tab on the left hand side of the page.

A second helping: Popular categories from 2011

As we enter this last month of 2011 we thought we would take a moment to revisit some of the most popular blog categories from this year.

• In the words of our patients
  Whether it was a patient telling their story through us or as a guest blogger we were honored to share so many personal stories with our blog audience.
• Diet & Nutrition
Diet & Nutrition was continually a hot topic area for us, whether it was understanding probiotics and how they can help your chemotherapy treatment plan or getting a better grasp of what whole foods are we hope you benefited from our articles on diet and nutrition. 
• Being a Patient
Being a Patient is a category we created to help share tips, answer question and, when appropriate tell the stories of other patients. 
• Talking with your Doctor
Talking with your Doctor covers areas that we feel are very important when talking with us, your doctors! A lot of times it's easy to get overwhelmed in the moment but hopefully our articles helped bring some clarity. 
• For Support Partners
  From the beginning we said we wanted to create a resource for those undergoing a cancer diagnosis personally and those who are supporting someone with a cancer diagnosis. These articles always aimed to "support" our support partners.

Of course these are just a few categories. To view them all, just look to the left of your screen, under the word categories are everything we covered this year.