“Trouble brings experience. Experience brings wisdom.”
—Aeschylus

By Wendy S. Harpham, MD, FACP
Faculty, 2017 Cancer Survivorship Symposium

In your quest to find healing words for your patients, I encourage you to attend General Session 4: “One of Our Own—Insights of Health Care Providers on Coping with Cancer,” at the 2017 Cancer Survivorship Symposium on Saturday, January 28, at 3:45 PM.

This panel brings me together with three other cancer survivors who are also health care professionals. We will share hard-won insights on coping with cancer and advice for those who are involved in the care of patients with cancer.

Ann H. Partridge, MD, FASCO, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, will open the session with an overview of Shoshana Rosenberg’s “What I wish I had known: Young breast cancer survivors reflect on their experiences after breast cancer surgery” (Abstract 180).

Richard Dickens, MS, LCSW-R, of Cancer Care, a long-term lymphoma survivor after bone marrow transplantation for recurrence, will discuss what he’s learned about finding meaning and transforming it into purpose, by retaining the heightened awareness of what matters, long after treatment ends.

Yvonne Gomez-Carrion, MD, FACOG, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a gynecologist in her first year of remission from breast cancer, will share what her spiritual journey after cancer taught her about helping patients explore their faith after a cancer diagnosis.

Bret Sohn, MD, of Northwell Health, an internist and survivor of multiple recurrences of childhood orbital rhabdomyosarcoma, will share how visible scars may affect patients’ sense of self and how patients carry out their lives. He will also touch on how his personal experiences have factored into his care of patients.

I am a retired internist (on staff in a non-clinical capacity at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas), long-term cancer survivor, and writer and public speaker on survivorship. My presentation will offer a provocative new vision of hope: what hope is and how to use hope in healing ways in your practice.

After this interactive panel, you will leave the symposium with renewed appreciation for the challenges and rewards of caring for patients with cancer. On behalf of the General Session 4 faculty, I hope to see you there.

Find more information about the 2017 Cancer Survivorship Symposium program.

Dr. Harpham writes the “View from the Other Side of the Stethoscope” column in Oncology Times. Her books on survivorship include Only 10 Seconds to Care: Help and Hope for Busy Clinicians (ACP Press).