I am a retired oncologist, previously an attending physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, with a professional lifetime experience in caring for patients with all stages of breast cancer, and now I am a regular reader of The ASCO Post.
In recent months there have been several articles published in The ASCO Post on the subject of the care of the whole patients when faced with the advanced stages of cancer. Reports have also been published from patients on their experiences with the problems they have faced, physical as well as emotional, in dealing with their illness (breast cancer in particular), as well as with its treatment.
Many if not most of these issues were addressed in a book I published in 2002 titled Conversations with Breast Cancer Patients.
I hope this book could be of interest to readers both in the field of patient care as well as to patients and their families. The treatment modalities that are mentioned incidentally in the text are outdated to a large extent. However, the main feature of this book relates to the problems faced by the patient and to the communication between patient and physician along the entire course of the illness, and it remains, I believe, very much up to date. I hope you may find it of interest and worth mentioning its main features in The ASCO Post. ■
—Ernest Greenberg, MD
Forest Hills, New York
Dr. Greenberg is a retired oncologist who practiced as an attending physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. For more information about the book Conversations with Breast Cancer Patients, contact Dr. Greenberg at egreen5402@aol.com.
Editor’s note: Adaptations from Dr. Greenberg’s book will be published on an occasional basis in future issues of The ASCO Post.
