News
By Cheree Cleghorn, Editor
MSNBC has posted a remarkable story about a doctor who devised her own cancer treatment—-for pancreatic cancer, one which is among the most lethal. (The original story appeared in Self Magazine.) She is alive and enjoying every moment. Any layperson can learn from her story although, obviously, her M.D. degree made a huge difference in her ability to do this.
Since I Am Not A Doctor, What Can I Do?
A friend, a journalist, walked in the door one day to find X-rays all over the floor and her bold husband curled up in the fetal position on the sofa.
“In that moment, I knew my life had changed forever,” she said.
He had a brain tumor so rare that, at that time, there only were seven cases on record.
Although people at the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins assured her that they were in the best place for treatment of his cancer, she had to have the proof for herself.
So, she got online and read the medical literature herself. Journalists do know how to make some sense out of material foreign to them, to make notes for the parts that don’t. She took her questions to the expert treating her husband. Reading that original research satisfied her need to know that they were doing everything possible. Many people want to do that, too—-to know that everything possible is being done.
For you who want to read the medical literature yourself, one of our favorite physician sites, Medpage Today, has a free guide to biostatistics. It is written for doctors. It still will be challenging to the lay reader but it helps orient readers to the language of research.
Medpage Today Guide to Biostatistics
You can find free abstracts and the original medical research studies (sometimes there is a small fee) at the NIH research site, commonly referred to as PubMed.
The more patients participate in their care, the better they do.
There are pounds of research to support that. Whether you want to be as informed as possible or you are searching for the latest information on treatment, this is the place to find everything in print. You also should check journals’ online sites.
They now often publish important research online before it appears in the print edition.