Archive Posts

Deirdre Neilen, PhD shares a selection from Upstate’s literary journal, ‘The Healing Muse‘ every Sunday on HealthLink on Air. She edits the annual publication featuring fiction, poetry, essays and visual art focused on themes of medicine, illness, disability and healing.

Order copies of ‘The Healing Muse’ through the Center for Bioethics & Humanities.

Snow, by Katharyn Howd Machan

falls outside my safe brown home
and I am weeping, I am crying:
this house holds two black-striped cats
but God is a distant palace of whim

allowing my daughter to long for a drug
that turns her into thin gray smoke,
vague lips that lie for survival.
Crystals? They’re blowing now

swift and silver and silent as hope
only a mother can ask to find
when the body she’s birthed and loves
finds heroin is more important

than giving to the wider world
calling out her name. Snow
beautiful and bright and pure
pours down from a streetlit night

here where I dare write a poem
praying that the girl I bore
is able to look out through a window
and wonder at winter sky.

Things My Daughter Lost in Hospitals, by Toni L. Wilkes

One million twenty-seven strands of hair.
A smooth scalp. Several inches of frontal bone.

A Tiffany bracelet. Thirty-nine liters of urine.
The call button. Her patience. A pear-shaped

Gallbladder. Her husband’s patience. Eight pints
of blood. Numerous stainless steel staples.

Her job. One decaliter of cerebral spinal fluid.
Two blue and white hospital gowns. Her pink

sweater. The ability to have more children.
Twenty-two pieces of Big Red chewing gum.

Forty-one days of consciousness. Names
of night nurses. Names of day nurses. Six

Actiq lollypops. Seven neurosurgeons.
Two hundred eighteen sutures. Her daughter’s

sixth birthday. The desire for sex. Three yellow
bedpans. Her blood-brain barrier. Five years.

Rosemary Rochford PhD is widely known for her research on Burkitt’s Lymphoma, the most common childhood cancer in sub-Saharan Africa.  She will talk about the cancer challenges in developing countries, how the cancer registry programs work, the main types of cancers that exist in Africa and how they differ from those in the United States.  Rochford is professor & chair of Microbiology & Immunology and recently appointed vice president for research at Upstate.   

Upstate hematologist/oncologist Ajeet Gajra will talk about the theory behind ‘personalized cancer care’ – how it differs from ‘targeted therapy’, and how the Upstate Cancer Center provides this type of care.  Upstate is involved in a variety of active trials seeking participants.  

Read more about the new Upstate Cancer Center, opening Spring 2014.

Dr. Gennady Bratslavsky, director of Upstate’s Prostate Cancer Program, reveals a new kidney cancer vaccine trial as a possible treatment for advanced renal cell carcinoma.  The study hopes to train the body’s own immune system to fight the cancer by making a vaccine from their own cancer cells. The study is open to patients with advanced kidney cancer.  For more information, call 315-464-1500.

Read the study, from ClinicalTrials.gov

ADAPT Kidney Cancer Study

Dr. Karol Kerr, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist at the Dr. William J. Waters Center for Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders at Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital and the Upstate Cancer Center, is receiving a grant from the St. Baldrick’s Foundation for the second year in a row.  Dr. Kerr talks about the types of patients she sees, and how this grant money will be used to support the multidisciplinary center’s services.  The St Baldrick’s Foundation is a volunteer-driven and donor-centered charity dedicated to raising money for childhood cancer research. 

For more information, or to donate: St. Baldrick’s fundraiser in Syracuse

Upstate surgeons David Halleran and Jiri Bem are joined by Linda Veit, special projects manager at the Upstate Cancer Center, to talk about colorectal cancer and the importance of the colonoscopy as a screening tool. The also discuss a study they are involved in to determine what biomarkers might be used to predict/detect colon cancer — perhaps in lieu of a colonoscopy in the future.  For more information, or to participate in the study, call 315-464-1852.

Onondaga County Cancer Services Program on Facebook

Read the study: Study of Biomarkers for Early Detection of Colorectal Adenocarcinoma in Adults Undergoing Colonoscopy

Among cancers that affect both men and women, colorectal cancer (cancer of the colon or rectum) is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Upstate surgeons David Halleran and Jiri Bem, are joined by Jenny Dickinson from the Onondaga County Health Department, to discuss the Onondaga County Cancer Services Program partnership, which provides free cancer screenings to the uninsured and underinsured.  For more information, call 435-3653.

Onondaga County Cancer Services Program on Facebook

March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month

Dr. Dilip Kittur, chief of hepatobiliary & pancreatic surgery at Upstate, talks about the rising incidence of pancreatic cancer.

More information:
Smoking, drinking tied to earlier pancreatic cancer: study
Bacteria may signal pancreatic cancer risk

Beth Trunfio, executive director of Ronald McDonald House Charities^® of Central New York (RMC) and Leola Rodgers, associate administrator for Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital and RMC board member, share their excitement as the November opening of the new Ronald McDonald house in Syracuse nears.

Cassi Terpening, doctor of physical therapy and certified strength and conditioning specialist, talks about Upstate’s fatigue management program, and how it is used in cancer rehabilitation.

The Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation – To schedule an appointment, call 464-6543.

Oncologist Ajeet Gajra, associate professor of medicine at Upstate and the fellowship director in hematology/oncology, talks about cancer care for senior citizens.  About 60 percent of all cancers and more than 70 percent of all cancer deaths occur in the elderly, yet there is a lack of data regarding risks and benefits of cancer therapy in these older adults.