Cancer Champions offers compassionate guidance and clarity to you and your loved ones throughout your cancer journey.
As your trusted guide, we empower you and your family with knowledge and confidence to make informed decisions about your cancer care and regain your peace of mind. Schedule a 15 minute get-acquainted call (free)Schedule a 90-minute consultationWith Cancer Champions,
You Don’t Have to Face Cancer Alone
If you or a loved one is feeling overwhelmed and anxious by a cancer diagnosis, compassionate support is available. Cancer Champions can ease your fear and uncertainty by helping you and your loved ones understand your specific disease, collect personalized healthcare information, evaluate your treatment options, and make informed decisions.
Combining oncology knowledge with genuine compassion makes Cancer Champions a trusted advisor that complements your cancer care team and provides peace of mind throughout your cancer journey. Call Dana to learn more about how she can help to create a personalized roadmap to guide you and your family.
CONSULTATION
When you are presented with a difficult diagnosis, most likely you don’t know what you don’t know yet. Because I have professional healthcare experience and have personally been through several cancer journeys, I compassionately work with you to create a personalized roadmap to help you and your family navigate the journey. I also provide resources and informationto to help you take the first steps.
EDUCATION
When you are making critical decisions — you need access to the most relevant information, tailored to your unique situation. With both professional and personal experience researching treatment options and supportive care solutions for individuals facing cancer, I am uniquely qualified to offer families the types of information and resources they will need to make better informed decisions about their care.
FACILITATION
Upon hearing a cancer diagnosis, emotions often take control and inhibit decision making. Anxiety and fear may stifle important conversations that family members and loved ones need to have with the individual fighting cancer. I can help to facilitate these important but difficult conversations, with compassion and a kind and open heart.
7 Questions to Ask Your Oncologist
It’s helpful to have a list of questions to ask your doctor when you are presented with a cancer diagnosis. Here are 7 questions to ask at your next doctor’s appointment.
Recent articles
Looking For A Practical Way To Help Someone With Cancer?
I am regularly inspired by the creative ways communities come together to offer support of individuals and families facing a disruptive diagnosis like cancer.
There are so many of you out there and today I’d like you to meet Reagan, an eighth grade student, philanthropist and guest blogger.
It wasn’t fair! How could my uncle be perfectly healthy one day and fighting for his life the next? How could he go from running marathons to barely being able to get out of bed? It was quite the concept for my seven year-old brain to wrap around. I felt powerless because I couldn’t truly help him get better. So, I decided to make him one thousand origami cranes. As I learned from the story of Sadako, making one thousand origami cranes grants you one wish and my wish for my uncle to get healthy was successful. I have since made the cranes many more times, and that’s how I met Chelsea.
Chelsea was suffering from Stage 4 Triple Negative Breast Cancer when I sent her a set of cranes. The cranes fostered a friendship between Chelsea and me, and we began exchanging letters. What I learned from those letters was that Chelsea had started her very own charity, Foye Belle, and The Blue Bag Movement.
The Blue Bag Movement was her brainchild, a way for her to help support people going through the same terrible disease she was suffering from. Chelsea realized the need in her community by sitting for hours in an infusion center, observing the many people who did not have the support of their friends and family or the items she considered essentials to ease the pain of chemotherapy. Chelsea decided to provide chemotherapy patients with a Blue Bag of necessities for treatment designed to support cancer patients while enduring hours of chemotherapy.
Unfortunately, this wonderful woman, who thought more about others than herself, lost her battle to cancer. Now, it is my wish to carry on her dream of helping others by continuing the movement.
If you are currently battling cancer or know someone who is, Foye Belle provides bags containing items Chelsea found to help her alleviate symptoms like nausea with ginger candies, blankets for comfort and warmth during chemotherapy and entertainment items to help pass the time.
I urge you to join me and check out https://foyebelle.org/
You can also offer your support of the charity and the thousands of people suffering from cancer. Every penny counts toward supporting people like my uncle, like Chelsea, and like your friends and family, because Foye Belle is a charity created by a cancer patient for cancer patients. – Reagan Exley
Shouldn’t my doctor be doing this?
Recently, while delivering a comprehensive plan for a client, they exclaimed with exasperation “ Why isn’t my doctor doing this”? As a result of this encounter, I will attempt to answer this question and hopefully level set the expectations of future patients.
The simple answer is, they don’t have the time. It’s not what we want to hear especially when we are looking to them to be the experts. Is this valid?
Do they really not have time to do their job?
In a recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine: “Allocation of Physician Time in Ambulatory Practice: A time motion study in 4 specialties. “ 57 physicians representing four specialties were observed for 430 hours. All of the observable time was in the office; hospital time and time in the operating room was excluded.
Observer’s tracked activity in categories such as
- Clinical time, (talking and interacting with patients, or talking with staff about matters directly related to a patient)
- Desk Work, time spent documenting in electronic health records
- Administrative time
- Personal time, which included bathroom breaks and eating
The results of this study validate the fact that your doctor spends just 25% of their time actually calling on her/his skills as a physician due to the 49% of time they spend taking care of the administrative tasks of medicine.
If you have been to your doctor recently you probably noticed that s/he spent as much time communicating and/or examining you as s/he spent typing or dictating into a computer as they try to stay on top of the administrative demands government or insurance industry regulations have placed on them.
Despite the disproportionate amount of clinical to administrative time in the office, Doctors were found to spend an average 1.5 additional hours completing data entry at home.
So what does that mean for you, the patient and healthcare consumer?
- Now, more than ever you may want to seek the second opinion of a “specialist” if you have a “less common” cancer. The general medical oncologist has a basic knowledge of a variety of the most common cancers; however, for many physicians, time once allocated to reading up on novel therapies or researching clinical trial options for patients has been replaced by administrative tasks.
- You, the patient and consumer must be more proactive to ensure you are prepared for each appointment in order to maximize the few minutes of face time you have with your clinician.
My client had been diagnosed with a “rare” form of a common cancer. She did not feel like her oncologist was hearing her and so she called me. After reviewing her case I helped her access the expertise she needed.
If she had not been proactive she may not have gained access to the newest treatment protocols for her type of cancer.
If you have questions about your current situation please contact me via this site or by phone, 703-403-7600. I am happy to speak with you.
Warmly,
Dana
Your cancer is “rare”. Now what?
You have been told you have cancer. And to complicate matters your tumor is considered “rare”.
Cancer is not just one disease. There are more than 200 different types of cancer that include solid tumors as well as malignancies that occur in the blood or are blood-based, such as leukemias.
All cancer is complex, however, there are some cancers that occur more frequently making their treatment options more straightforward. Breast, lung and prostate cancers represent the most commonly diagnosed tumors in the US.
The large numbers of people affected by breast, lung and prostate cancer enables research to be conducted imparting information about best treatment options. The results of many clinical trials combined with historical perspectives provide physicians with guidelines and agreed upon standards of care for treatment of the most common cancers.
So what makes a cancer rare? Typically a cancer is considered rare if it starts in an unusual place in the body or is an unusual type or is simply not one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers.
My father was diagnosed with bile duct cancer, cholangiocarcinoma.
8,000 people in the US are diagnosed with this form of cancer annually. In comparison there are 97,220 new cases of colon cancer diagnosed is the US.
The small numbers of people affected with cholangiocarcinoma makes it rare and difficult to conduct clinical trials to ascertain the best treatment. Physicians do not always agree on the best course of action for a “rare” cancer.
So what do you do?
Research and gather information.
What are the treatment options for your type of cancer? Are there clinical trials available? Are there experts for your type of cancer and where are they located? The Internet is a useful tool, however, it is not regulated, be critical of the sources you use.
Choose your healthcare team.
Find an oncologist and cancer center that specializes in rare tumors. If possible it is best to stay within your insurance network; however, it may be worth going out of network to get the expertise of a specialist.
Find support.
Assemble a network of family, friends and community resources to help you manage emotional, practical and financial issues.
Information and knowledge are the most powerful tools to have as you plan and prepare. If you would like to explore how a private advocate can help please contact us at 703-403-7600 or email mailto:dana@cancer-champions.com.
Schedule a get-acquainted call
The first step is a free 15-minute get-acquainted call to see how I can help. The next step is to schedule our first 90 minute consultation , where I will personalize a roadmap for you and your family, and determine next steps.
