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Showing posts with label breast cancer. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Kelly Corrigan Transcending, Acceptance, Memoirs, Tell Your Story, Cancer

Philadelphia Inquirer, LOCAL News section, Front Page (Page B1), Tuesday, February 24, 2015:

Kelly Corrigan draws on growing up in Radnor for memoirs

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Author Kelly Corrigan

Author Kelly Corrigan Drew Altizer

JUSTINE MCDANIEL, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

LAST UPDATED: Tuesday, February 24, 2015, 1:08 AM

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Kelly Corrigan loves driving down Darby Paoli Road in Villanova.
The author has returned to it many times, both on visits to her parents' house and in her best-selling memoirs about family.
It's the look of the landscape.
The way the hills slope.

The lack of stoplights on the road.
"I just think it's beautiful," said Corrigan, 47.
It also, like many roads in her life seem to, leads to her mother and father.
The Radnor native has built a career writing about her relationships with her parents and daughters.
She started out selling her first memoir, about her and her father's simultaneous battles with cancer, in friends' living rooms in 2008.
It wasn't until a video essay of Corrigan's about female bonds called "Transcending" went viral on YouTube that she herself went from a newcomer to a big name.
"Transcending" has gotten nearly five million hits. All three of her memoirs have reached No. 2 on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.
This month, Corrigan is starting the paperback tour for the third book, Glitter and Glue, which was first published in hardcover a year ago.
The book tackles Corrigan's relationship with her mother.
"I didn't leave my childhood thinking my mother was going to be a big part of my life. I didn't think we really had enough in common to hold us together," Corrigan said last week from her home in California.
That changed, first during Corrigan's postcollege job as a nanny to children whose own mother had just died, and later after Corrigan's breast cancer diagnosis at age 36.
The book weaves those stories together with the ability to relate that has drawn Corrigan thousands of fans.
"The nicest thing people ever say, that makes me so happy, is, they say, 'Exactly. This is exactly how I felt,' or, 'This is exactly what I've wanted to say,' " Corrigan said.
She aims to put words to elements of life that can be hard to express but are worth thinking about, she said. Her next book will be about acceptance - the things that are "blocking us from being able to let go."
In conversation, Corrigan is as engaging and funny as she is on the page. Fast-paced and thoughtful, she weaves back and forth between jokes and wisdom. Her mother's voice frequently works its way in, via Corrigan's croaky, Philadelphia-Baltimore-accented imitation of her.
Corrigan's parents still live in the house in which she and her two brothers grew up. Both she and her father finished cancer treatment in 2006.
Corrigan, who now lives in Oakland with her husband and two daughters, 11 and 13, remembers her childhood fondly. She gives great credit to Radnor High School, from which she graduated in 1985.
Corrigan received her master's degree in literature from San Francisco State University and worked for the United Way before her writing career. She was featured in The Inquirer in 1998 for Shakespeare-teaching software she developed as a graduate student and demonstrated at Radnor.
"I am incredibly proud of her," said Mary Anne Caporaletti, who taught Corrigan's senior-year Advanced Placement literature class at Radnor. Corrigan was a brave student, she said.
Since the release of Glitter and Glue, Corrigan has taken her comedic yet poignant style to a new endeavor: a talk show for Medium.com called "Foreword," which launched on YouTube last month.
So far, she's interviewed the author Margaret Atwood and the actor Jason Segel, among others, about "big ideas."
"We're really going for . . . something more satisfying, that you will refer to in your mind over time, that will change the way you think about something in a lasting way," Corrigan said.
She is also hoping to create change on her book tour by donating all its proceeds to charity. Her reading on Monday, scheduled for Montgomery School in Chester Springs at 7 p.m., will benefit the Exton-based nonprofit Family Lives On, an organization that helps bereaved children carry on traditions they had with their deceased parents.
The family-oriented organization is a perfect match for Glitter and Glue, Corrigan said.
Her childhood house on Wooded Lane has changed little. Corrigan sleeps in her old bedroom when she visits. It's almost like a museum, she said, and one she has mined well in her writing.
Glitter and Glue was the first book Corrigan attempted. After six months, she decided it was a ludicrous aspiration, akin to wanting to win an Oscar, she said. But 20 years later, the book is on Oprah Winfrey's list of favorites. Corrigan's mother thinks it's the best one yet. And Corrigan said she has learned one important lesson:
"You're allowed to tell your story."

jmcdaniel@philly.com
610-313-8205

@McDanielJustine

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Thursday, April 17, 2014

When Someone Tells You They Have Cancer, What NOT to Say

Philadelphia Magazine, BeWellPhilly

What Not to Say When Someone Tells You They Have Cancer

BY EMILY LEAMAN | APRIL 16, 2014 AT 2:00 PM

Shutterstock

Ardmore-based Breastcancer.org posed the following question to its Facebook fans yesterday: “What is the one thing you DO NOT want to hear when you tell someone you have cancer?”

Not surprisingly, the question got a ton of responses from cancer patients and survivors, who shared what resonated and jarred them when they told their friends, family members and coworkers that they’d been diagnosed with cancer. I thought we might all be able to learn a thing or two from their posts, so here is a selection of the most insightful responses. Click on the link above to see the full list.

Like what you're reading? Stay in touch with Be Well Philly—here's how:

Monday, December 2, 2013

Lung Cancer Kills More, Gets Less Heed Research Dollars & Donor Wise

Bonnie Miller Rubin, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

POSTED: Monday, December 2, 2013, 2:01 AM

CHICAGO - November was Lung Cancer Awareness Month, but you'd never know it. Consumers weren't bombarded by products in blue, the color designated by some to raise the profile of the disease. No NFL players or coaches wore blue-ribboned apparel, the way they wore pink the previous month for breast cancer.

"It just doesn't seem fair," said Meghan O'Brien, 31, a nonsmoker diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer last year. There is no stage 5.

The lack of buzz is especially perplexing because lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, claiming more lives than breast, prostate, colon, and pancreatic cancers combined. The five-year survival rate is just 16 percent - a statistic that has barely budged since 1975, according to the American Cancer Society.

But lung cancer is seen as a tobacco-related illness that patients bring upon themselves.

About 10 percent to 15 percent of the roughly 228,000 people diagnosed with the disease each year were never smokers, according to the LUNGevity Foundation, a Chicago support organization.

Stigma negatively affects everything from emotional support to the anemic November awareness campaign. Even in obituaries, family members feel compelled to include the "nonsmoker" status, lest the deceased be wrongly judged.

However, nowhere is the disparity more evident than in research funding. The National Cancer Institute estimates that $17,835 is spent per breast cancer death, vs. $1,378 for lung cancer, even though lung cancer accounts for almost 23,000 deaths annually among nonsmokers.

"If we don't start paying attention and changing attitudes, we will have a losing battle ahead of us," said Ravi Salgia, O'Brien's oncologist at University of Chicago Medicine.

Better screening and biomarker tests are on the horizon. But none of it may happen without removing significant political, social, and financial barriers.

Lung cancer top killer, but research dollars and donor support poor: oncologist

By Sheryl Ubelacker, The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press – Thu, 14 Nov, 2013

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TORONTO - Lung cancer kills more Canadians each year than any other malignancy, but the disease receives a disproportionate amount of research and donation dollars compared with far less deadly cancers, says a national advocacy organization.

Lung Cancer Canada says the disease causes more than 28 per cent of Canadian cancer deaths — more than those from breast, colon and prostate cancer combined — but receives only seven per cent of cancer-specific research funding and 0.1 per cent of charitable cancer donations.

Dr. Natasha Leighl, an oncologist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, said the reason lung cancer gets so little respect is the stigma surrounding tobacco use — and the mistaken belief that all cases of lung cancer result from smoking.

But Leighl said at least 15 per cent of people who get lung cancer never smoked and some develop it through exposure to radon gas or industry-related carcinogens like asbestos. And recently, the World Health Organization fingered air pollution as a major cause of lung cancer.

"As someone who works in this area, I'm always so surprised that Canadians are so supportive of other smoking-related diseases like heart disease and stroke, and yet lung cancer seems to bear all the blame associated with smoking," she said Thursday.

"I think it's important to realize that a growing number of people with lung cancer are people who smoked as teenagers and then quit when they were very young. There's a growing number of never-smokers with this disease, and this is something that really affects all Canadians and is definitely worth people supporting, irrespective of the smoking issue."

In fact, one in 12 Canadians is at risk for lung cancer in their lifetime — both smokers and never-smokers alike, said Leighl, who is also president of Lung Cancer Canada.

About 25,000 Canadians are diagnosed annually with lung cancer and an estimated 20,000 die each year from the disease, said the organization, which is calling for a national screening program, increased research funding and greater access to new life-prolonging drugs.

Dr. Peter Ellis, an oncologist at McMaster University's Juravinski Cancer Centre, said that despite the grim toll taken on women by lung cancer, the disease "isn't even recognized" in fundraising events like the annual Weekend to End Women's Cancers.

"We need to change that," Ellis told a briefing on the state of lung cancer in Canada on Thursday.

Other cancers, among them colon and breast cancer, are influenced by lifestyle choices such as poor diet and lack of exercise, but patients with those malignancies aren't typically exposed to the stigma attached to lung cancer.

Indeed, those dealing with lung cancer say they often feel isolated because of people's reactions to their diagnosis. Typically, they say, it begins with: "Oh, I never knew you smoked!"

Roz Brodsky was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2004 at age 45, not long after she had quit smoking. Like many in her generation, she said she started smoking as a teen because she thought it was "glamorous" and she got hooked.

When some people learned she had lung cancer, they either "recoiled with horror or asked 'Do you smoke?'" instead of asking if she was OK, said Brodsky of Thornhill, Ont.

She said she found it difficult, in a society where women with breast cancer get so much support with numerous pink-ribbon fundraising efforts, that there was not even a support group for people with lung cancer in a city as large as Toronto.

Now 55 and cancer-free, Brodsky said she worries about young people who have never smoked mistakenly believing they have no risk of lung cancer because of its connection with smoking.

"The way lung cancer is portrayed ... it lulls non-smokers into a false sense of security."

Despite lung cancer's lack of clout in the fundraising arena, Leighl said doctors and researchers are making strides forward in earlier diagnosis and treatment.

The five-year survival rate has risen to 18 per cent from about 14 per cent a decade ago, and there have been a number of breakthroughs in understanding what drives the development of lung cancer at the molecular level.

That's led to new drugs, such as Tarceva, which target genetic abnormalities within cancer cells. Other drugs, which are in clinical trials but available for doctors to prescribe, act to help the immune system recognize and kill cancer cells.

"This is not chemotherapy," Leighl said of the immune-based therapy. "You don't lose your hair, you don't get sick to your stomach. This is really about harnessing the immune system and its ability to kill cancer.

"We've seen dramatic (tumour) shrinkages in patients with lung cancer. I've had patients who've been on those treatments for more than a year. They've been chemotherapy-free where even last year I would have had to put them on chemotherapy. That would have been the standard.

"So there's a lot of excitement and potential promise."

Lung Cancer Canada wants a national program to screen people with the highest risk of lung cancer, using low-dose computerized tomography, or CT, scans for earlier detection of the disease.

An estimated 1,250 lives could be saved each year with such screening and pilot programs need to be set up by all provinces, so Canadians across the country have access to them, Leighl said.

"This is something the government needs to move on quickly."