What a difference a year makes - check out these links for a review of some of the developments and advancements in cancer and cancer treatment over the past year: 

• This list mentions the nicotine patch among other great scientific advancements
• And Cancer.net breaks down their list into categories like standards of care, prevention & screening, and various cancers
• The Sun Protection Group list highlights the top developments in the protection of our largest organ (skin - in case you don’t know)

Fixmychemobrain is a real-life twitter user name and it expresses the way many patients feel after going through chemo. Their minds are foggy, their memory is bad, they forget names, and have trouble concentrating.  It is not just in their head, studies are showing that the chemicals used in chemotherapy may have a detrimental effect on brain cells and nerves (note: all chemo-therapies differ). This condition is now being recognized as chemo brain.

Admitting there is a problem is the first step (talking about the doctors here, not the patients). The next steps are to visit some helpful websites like Health After Chemo and Cancer.Org. Educate yourself and more importantly, educate those around you, many caregivers and family members think that once treatment is over, cancer is over.  Some of the effects of chemo can last for a year or more after treatment. The more people you have on your team, the better. Stay informed, ask for help, and you may not have to carry a chalkboard around your neck (like post-stroke Anthony Hopkins in Legends of the Fall) forever.

Seth Rogen and James McAvoy (yeah that guy with those blue eyes)  are  slated to be in I’m With Cancer, a film based on  Will Reiser’s (a producer for some HBO and Vh1) experiences with young adult cancer.   According to an article in First Showing, “The script is about Reiser’s struggle to beat cancer, with a story centering on a 25-year-old who finds out he has the disease.”

Terry Gross recently interviewed writers and cancer survivors Iva Skoch and Kairol Rosenthal on Fresh Air.  Both authors discuss the health insurance issues they dealt with when they were diagnosed. Kairol Rosenthal uses a succinct and thoughtful anaology - recalling the myth about a child trapped under a car and the mother somehow gathering enough strength and focus to pull the car off the injured child - and how upon her diagnosis in her twenties, she felt like both the child and the mother.  Spoken like someone that has navagated the messy labryinth of treatment, paperwork, and phone calls that is known as Young Adult Cancer. 

The first chapter of Kairol Rosenthal’s book Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20s and 30s contains great health insurance and financial guidance information for cancer patients.  You can download it for free on her website http://everythingchangesbook.com/

Listen to the Fresh Air interview here (running time 38mins 35sec).

Or view the transcript here.

Read Skoch’s Newsweek.com article “Young Patients Laugh at Cancer”

A recent article in The Telegram profiles a foundation started in 2008 specifically to raise awareness about the  gap in cancer awareness and resources for patients between the ages 15-40.

According to the article, James W. Coghlin Sr. founded the 15-40 Connection, based in Massachusetts,  to “close the AYA (adolescent and young adult) gap” in survival rates, research, education and awareness for adolescents and young adults ages 15 to 40.

Their new website focuses on the upsetting statistics that show there is no improvement in survival rates for the 15-40 age group. We can see why the foundation’s slogan is, “Mind the Gap.”

Visit the site for more information and to view a five minute video titled, Lost in the Middle.