Every day I am inspired by my courageous patients and the exciting progress we make in breast cancer research. I know the work we do will push the field forward. But to do this work, I had to give up a lot of my hobbies and previous pastimes. Believe it or not, I used to play Rock & Roll.
“I am very blessed. Regardless of what happened, God helped me to get through all of this. And I believe in my heart that God will not give you anything that you cannot handle. He gave me Jim. Jim got me through every single day of this past year.”
As artist Shasti O’Leary Soudant planned the creation of Wish Field, she thought about the emotions of the cancer patients and survivors who would see it. For that she did not need her imagination; she had her own memory.
“You would think that after 34 years of marriage, I would have known everything there was to know about my wife, Theresa,” says Ralph Germaine. But as he watched her yearlong battle with breast cancer, her inner strength and optimism surprised even him. While Theresa was hospitalized at Roswell Park, she and Ralph found respite in the peace and greenery of Kaminski Park, in the center of the Roswell campus.
Over the past 14 years, Roswell Park patients, their families and friends have helped build one of the most powerful tools available to cancer researchers. Here’s how it works — and how you can help.
The news that you are cancer-free can stir up many feelings — relief, exhaustion, excitement, apprehension — and you may wonder what happens next. Although you and your loved ones have worked toward and hoped for this outcome, there are many aspects of survivorship, and it may take time to adjust to life after treatment.
Oral health is a crucial component of cancer care. About 40 percent of patients develop complications that affect the mouth. Head and neck radiation, chemotherapy, and blood and marrow transplantation can cause issues ranging from dry mouth to life-threatening infections. These problems interfere with cancer treatment and affect quality of life.
I’m not one to worry about what comes next. I live in the moment. That’s the attitude I had nearly 20 years ago when I was first treated for breast cancer, and that’s how I took it two years ago when a routine mammogram showed that my cancer had come back. I was not the least bit concerned about having a mastectomy. But this time, after the mastectomy, my surgeon suggested that I consider breast reconstruction.
In December 2016, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) announced a major collaboration focused on an emerging area of cancer research: neoantigens. These small proteins on the surface of cancer cells arise from mutations often unique to a tumor, making personalized immunotherapies like cancer vaccines a possibility.