Holidays and the BCC

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are probably my favorite weeks of the year. I had the priveledge of attending my 4th UCSF Breast Care Center Holiday party tonight. As eventful, festive and fun as always. The Intern skit was once again phenomenal, poking fun at the idiosyncrasies and hysterics that make up the BCC. I absolutely love being able to see old friends and colleagues, hear they are well, and what they are up to now. The BCC really was a work-home, very different than anything I've experience in medical school, and an environment I will really strive to find in the future. I really miss being part of a team working towards a goal, in med school you're constantly floating through teams, never a full fledged member yourself.  It was my first full-time job, where I fell in love with medicine, and realized that work doesn't have to just be work, it can be a passion, a calling, and something you do with friends and colleagues, not just coworkers, something that is fun, creative, and worth your while, What a terrific reminder about what the holidays, and life in general, are all about. Also a good kick in the butt reminder of why I'm doing all this studying now, with finals 6 days from now, its the extra uumf I needed!

BreastCancerTrials.org makes MSNBC news

Here's the link to the article, check it out!

Favorite quotes:

"Users joke it's like match.com for breast cancer patients"

"Suddenly I get choices, I have decisions to make, I can decide what I want to do and what's best for me. It's a very empowering feeling," said Valerie Gardner, a user of the site"

"Everything we have ever learned about breast cancer, every advance has come out of clinical trials," she said. "I think that we can very soon see a time when we don't have to worry about dying from breast cancer.""

UCSF Decision Services in the Wall Street Journal

In today's Wall Street Journal you can find a great article on the UCSF Decision Services program. The article, Weighty Choices, In Patient's Hands, delves into how and why providing patients with information and decision support, like the program I was apart of for the last 2 years can be better for all parties involved. There is even a photo of one of my very good friends, Alexandra (Jay) Teng, doing part of the service. Glad to hear this great program is finally getting some publicity.

Goodbye to the BCC

Friday was my last day working at the UCSF Breast Care Center. It has been an amazing two years. I helped launch a national nonprofit website, BreastCancerTrials.org. I supported 68 women through difficult appointments and treatment decisions. And most of all, I learned so much from the amazing physicians, clinic staff, and all of my colleagues. These folks in the picture above have become some of my closest and dearest friends and are going to do amazing work in the field of health care and medicine. No doubt about it. The photos below are of me with my lovable supervisor and the BCT queen, Elly Cohen, at the AVON walk and me with my mentor and role model, Laura Esserman, the woman who makes this all happen... I have no doubt that the BCC has left a lasting impression on me and I look forward to doing the best I can at Stanford with such enjoyable and meaningful work under my belt. I may be leaving for medical school, but the BCC will always hold a very special place in my heart.

My Intern Presentation

Winding down at the BCC

I'm in my last week of work at the BCC. It has been an eventful and fulfilling two years and it's still a bit surprising to me that I only have 4 days of work left! I invested a lot of myself into my job, and I'm proud of my contribution. As I train my replacement, I realize how much I really learned. It humbles me to think about medical school and the pace at which I will be absorbing new material and subjects. As with most of my experiences, my favorite part has been all the wonderful and unique people I've had the opportunity to work with. I will miss the interns, my colleagues, supervisors, and the patients I worked with so much! Fortunately I'm just a drive on the 280 away. :)

Video about BCT

Here's a short video clip of an interview with Elly and Laura (my two bosses) talking about BreastCancerTrials.org...We've come so far!

The wonderfulness of teaching

Recently we hired someone to help with the day-to-day operations of BreastCancerTrials.org that I've been managing up until now, and I get to train her! So she gets to watch a video on BreastCancer101, I get to teach her about trialCODE and how to code the clinical trials, etc etc. What I didn't realize was how much my energy would be renewed in the process. I'm realizing how much I've learned in the past 18 months, about the FDA, NCI, NIH, pharmaceudical companies, academic medicine, clinical trial design, cutting edge therapies in breast cancer. Taking a step back, I'm truly amazed. What I also didn't expect was to think about all the ways that we can still improve upon BreastCancerTrials.org, as I'm explaining our systems and software to her, I'm realizing how much work we still have to get done before the website is where we want it to be.

Just thought I'd share.

BCT.org in UCSF 2008 Year in Review

Here's the link, we're under the Cancer heading.

....The past year at UCSF has seen a steady stream of research breakthroughs, exciting innovations and inspiring accomplishments that have helped further the University's mission of advancing health worldwide™ as a global leader in patient care and scientific discovery....

The UCSF Center of Excellence for Breast Cancer Care launched a free, web-based service that helps patients around the country find out about and sign up for clinical breast cancer trials. The site, BreastCancerTrials.org, funded by a $2 million grant from the Safeway Foundation, is the first national service of its kind.

and we're LIVE!

This day will live in infamy...

www.BreastCancerTrials.org

Released nationwide as of 10:15am, July 31st, 2008.


This is a culmination of my work this year, and about 8 years in the making!

Authenticity

Debby Hamolsky is a nurse where I work, and each year she gives a talk on Breast Cancer Care for the new premedical intern group. Even though I am not a new intern, I remember how much her talk moved me last year so I decided to attend it again this year. I am so thankful I did. She gave a wonderful talk detailing all that a woman diagnosed with breast cancer must struggle with and go through.

Debby is a really amazing person. It’s not that she’s super smart or super motivated, or super anything really when I think about it. What really impresses me and inspires me about Debby is her authenticity. Debby is the most authentic, whole-hearted person I have ever had the chance to know.

It’s interesting that this quality of authenticity strikes me as amazing. Should it really be considered amazing? Is it really that difficult to be authentic? Has it always been this difficult to be authentic? To not get caught up in so many of the parts of life that we force ourselves to comply with, like looking the best, or feeling like we are the best, or thinking that other people aren’t the best? Trying to fit in and be liked by everyone? Am I the only person confronted with these feelings? In honesty, I don’t think that Debby should be considered amazing, I wish that more people had the characteristic of authenticity as she possess, so that Debby would be considered normal, instead of amazing. To me, being authentic, true to yourself and your values is what we should all be striving for.

I feel like so many of us don’t take the time to really think about what our values are, who we want to be, what we want to do. Not "do" as in right this moment, but "do" as a lifetime pursuit. I don’t mean to imply that to be authentic you must be helping others either, this is what Debby does as a nurse, but she does it because she really loves it and really values its impact, which is more important.

1 Year at the BCC

It’s been a year since I started working at the UCSF Breast Care Center. What a learning experience. I thought I would reflect on some of the highlights of the year in some upcoming blog posts.

Most rewarding has been working with patients to help them get the most out of their appointments with physicians. It’s so rewarding to me for two reasons, firstly, I see how incredibly helpful the exercise is for the patient, for understanding their disease, for thinking about what they value the most, for thinking about how they want to make the decisions they are faced with. Being able to help women have piece of mind about the decisions they make, helping them understand their cancer and come to grip with having a cancer in their body, is such a great thing to be able to offer, I am so happy I’ve been help them with this process. To be helpful to another human being, another family is such an awesome ability.

Secondly, this experience has been so personally rewarding for me. Through these women I have heard so many of their stories, hearing how breast cancer has affected their lives and relationships, but also hearing how they are persevering and coping. The diversity, the uniqueness, of the women I’ve worked with has really opened my eyes in ways I am very thankful for. I’ve been confronted with my own stereotypes and ignorance, and I am so thankful for this. I think my perspective has been widened immensely and I hope it continues to be widened as I know I am not perfect, nor do I perfectly understand other’s lives. At least I am at the point where I am beginning to realize this.

2007-2008 Intern Crew

Today was the last day we'd all be together, we had such a good time this past year!

My office buddies

So sad these two will be leaving me in 11 days!

BreastCancerTrials.org Preview

If you want to learn a bit about what I've been working on the past year, check out this tour of BreastCancerTrials.org. We will be launching our site soon and I will be sure to post about this when it happens.

PureMendocino

Here is a fun video of an unofficial UCSF Decision Services trip to the 2007 Pure Mendocino county organic food and wine festival event. All proceeds supported the Mendocino County Cancer Resource Center.

Enjoy!