By Nicole Hocker Glentzer In February of 2009, I was a 35-year-old high school principal with two small children of my own. I loved working. I enjoyed spending time with students and staff, going to games and chaperoning dances. Like many educators, I was not in the practice of taking the time to get regular health check-ups, but when I found a lump in my breast, I knew I’d better get it checked out. I [...]
By Executive Director Karen Oslund “Write what you know,” is an adage I have taken to heart, perhaps to a fault. I have written about women-specific cancers three times in the past year but not once about men’s cancer. This is an unfortunate oversight I intend to correct. September is prostate cancer awareness month and since I am writing about what I don’t know, I called an old friend of the Cancer Resource Centers of [...]
The prospect of sitting in an icy, air-conditioned movie theater on a hot summer day makes me reach for my cable knit cardigan. This happens to be the perfect attire for seeing “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” a new documentary about beloved children’s television personality Fred Rogers. Before summer is over, I recommend you grab your sweater and go see it, too, if you can find it playing in a theater near you. It is [...]
By Karen Oslund, Executive Director We have all heard the saying, “time is money,” but is time also health? This question occurs to me while standing at the kitchen sink, washing lettuce. It is a surprisingly time consuming project because this lettuce was growing in my garden a few minutes ago and there are bugs involved. A thorough washing requires plunging it into water, tearing it up into bite-sized pieces and spinning it dry. The [...]
By Karen Oslund Executive Director I was warned! When I first started watching for every item in the news related to cancer, I was told that June would bring a deluge of cancer-related stories. This is because the American Society of Clinical Oncologists (ASCO) holds its annual meeting in June and many new studies are released to coincide with this gathering. Sure enough, June has not disappointed. Some of these stories are hopeful, some helpful, [...]
By Karen Oslund, Executive Director I recently had the honor of being in Dr. Jay Joseph’s office when a patient got to ring the big, brass bell, symbolizing her completion of radiation therapy treatments for cancer. It was loud! The moment that a cancer patient finishes a course of treatment, whether radiation or chemotherapy, is cause for a celebration. It might be nurses busting out the confetti, or the patient may be invited to ring [...]
By Karen Oslund Executive Director, Cancer Resource Centers of Mendocino County Dr. John Rochat keeps an old Ann Landers column in the rack of hand-outs for his patients. If you visit his office under the right circumstances, he might pull a photocopy of it out and say, “this is for your friends.” This Ann Landers column ran in newspapers back in October 2000, and the heading reads “Early detection is the first step to beating [...]
By Karen Oslund The good news is, California has made 30 years of progress in reducing cigarette smoking among both youth and adults and now boasts the second-lowest smoking prevalence rate, right behind Utah. The bad news is that a new threat to our lungs and health is already here and addicting the next generation: e-cigarettes. “Vaping” is the word to describe inhaling aerosolized nicotine vapor and other chemicals into the lungs through the use [...]
By Carolyn Wyatt, Women's Health Nurse Practitioner The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 13,000 new cervical cancer cases will be diagnosed this year, and more than 4,000 women will die from cervical cancer. This is heartbreaking, because cervical cancer is entirely preventable. Unlike many types of cancer, we know what causes cervical cancer, we know it takes a long time to develop (20 years or so), and we have an affordable test to [...]
By Karen Oslund, Executive Director The beginning of a new year is a time when many people resolve to make positive changes in their health, so there will be plenty of articles to read this month about how to eat better, exercise more, and quit smoking. We absolutely should eat better, exercise more, and quit smoking! But this month I want to talk about one way we can improve our emotional, mental, and spiritual [...]