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I've been diagnosed with cancer! Why has this happened to me?
You get the diagnosis of a cancer and your mind goes blank
and you're thinking "What's going on in there? Is there some foreign invader in my body?
Is my immune system broken? What's wrong?
Did I do something wrong?" The truth is that little tumor cells
probably are forming in us every day and generally speaking our body can get rid of
them, can take care of them, but every now and then one builds and grows and
is resistant to our immune response, is able to survive within us so it's not some
foreign invader, it's your own cell.
The reason? It's important to know that a cancer
is your own cell, it comes back to how we treat them.
Now with bacteria, for example, we can give you an antibiotic because that's some
foreign invader, that is somebody else's cell, some other kind of cell.
But to kill cancer cells in you, in a patient and only those cells, leaving the
rest of you alone - that's the trick.
How has cancer treatment gotten better in the past decades?
Not too many years ago cancer was a very simple discipline
and one doctor could actually understand all that there was to know about pretty much
all the cancers that were out there - that is no longer the case.
We recognize now that breast cancer is different than colon cancer is different
than leukemia is different than lymphoma is different than brain tumors.
Our research is taking us deeper and deeper into each one of those tumors.
Our therapies, our treatments have gotten more and more complicated for each one of
those tumors. No one person can be an expert in all of
cancer anymore and that's where a comprehensive cancer center comes into play.
Why should I explore clinical trials in my cancer treatment?
There is no standard of care in cancer medicine where we're satisfied.
Yes, we have some medicines that are working. The Lance Armstrong's of the world we've
been curing for almost two decades now but still it requires crummy few months of
chemotherapy, admissions to the hospital, side effects and the like so even in those
cancers where we've figured it out we still could reduce the side effects.
But let's face it - most of the cancers that we take care of we are far from
solving it - and so how do we get from where we are today, yes better than we
were but far from where we need to be, to the future where we really are taking care
of cancer and curing the disease. What are the benefits of being
in a clinical trial?
By going into clinical research patients are getting really true
state-of-the-art care and the benefit that they receive from the new medicines
is palpable, there are clearly patients who live longer, there have been even patients
who we believe are cured from some of these new medicines, and then going
forward to figure out how to cure more people with these new medicines.
Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Hospital
is the only center to get official designation from the National Cancer
Institute in the DC area. What does that mean?
An NCI comprehensive cancer center is sort of like being in the
major leagues. There are 40 of them around the country,
to get in you have to have key elements and Lombardi and Georgetown University
Hospital has all of the key elements. It involves outstanding clinical folks
and clinical research, it involves outstanding and broad basic science -
discovery, understanding what makes cancers tick - and one that most folks
don't think about but population science - looking at populations at a whole
and understanding what is it about our environment, our world, our diet that
changes our risks for cancer, changes our outcomes.
We have all three of those here at Lombardi.
What does that mean to me in terms of programs available?
One of the other aspects of being a comprehensive cancer
center is to really take care of the whole person, to cure-a-person angle or focus of
the Georgetown University Hospital, and the cancer center really is a great model
for the cure-a-person angle or focus. Not only are we providing
state-of-the-art medical care, patients have access to nutrition support - we have
outstanding dietary support, we have outstanding support from the chaplains,
we have an art therapy program to die for, patients come and get involved in all
sorts of creative writing and arts and the like so many patients actually kind of
enjoy their day here at the center because of this.
In fact I have one patient who calls it chemo camp because she has so much fun
when she comes. But we know that everybody at some point
in their battle or many people at some point in their battle are going to get
into some trouble or are going to feel uncomfortable, are going to hurt and so we
also have really an outstanding program in palliative care that dovetails beautifully
with our clinical program so you would be seen with the palliative care doctor,
with your clinical doctor to make sure we're covering all of your symptoms and all the bases.
What do you think sets Lombardi physicians and researchers apart?
I'm proud to lead the Division of Hematology Oncology here at Georgetown.
I'm proud mostly because of the people I work with every day.
And if one looks at our physicians that we have within this group, you look across
and you see really world leaders on a clinical front in the areas of lymphoma,
of breast cancer, of GI cancer, of lung cancer, head and neck cancer so these
people are clearly the best and the brightest that are out there but that's
not really the reason I like them so much - really the reason I like them and I'm so
proud of them is that they're people and they understand about talking to folks
and people are scared and coming in for information and really to see the number
of lives that we touch on a daily basis. It's quite a team and I'm really proud of them.