Making Clinical Treatment Less of a Trial
A Cancer Patient’s Guide to Clinical Trials, By Marilyn Mulay, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 120 pages, $24.95 (Available through the publisher’s Web site at www.jbpub.com or by calling [978] 443-5000.)
Marilyn Mulay, a research nurse supervisor at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center, knows that a clinical trial can be overwhelming for the thousands of patients each year who enter one to get experimental medical treatment. It’s a world of confusing terminology, uncertain odds and the constant emotional strain of coping with a malignancy. Mulay’s book offers compassion and a recognition that patients often must struggle to find this information from a hodgepodge of sources, including the Internet and the experience of acquaintances.
Here, in one volume with helpful diagrams, Mulay explains cancer and its causes; walks readers through the various diagnostic tests, reports and cancer classifications, and then lays out the types of treatment and how to make a decision about them.
She also tackles the subtleties of drug development, organization of clinical trials (and their pros and cons), and patients’ rights and care while participating in them. She ends with a valuable glossary to make the inevitable jargon understandable.
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Your Family Health History, By Paula Packwood, Outcomes Plus, 104 pages, $18.95
Time and again, doctors, policymakers and health publications tell consumers how important it is to know their family health history. Paula Packwood, a registered nurse and certified case manager, tells them how to get it. She begins with the suggestion that one family member be designated to collect everyone’s medical history. From there, she offers pullout forms--medical history questionnaire sheets and psychosocial history sheets--that can create a picture of genes and environment’s role in a family’s health.
A family history should provide much more than relatives’ names and causes of death. It should include illnesses--including the age at which they were first noticed and diagnosed, their symptoms and all the tests, treatments and medications. The same goes for surgeries, accidents and disabilities. A family’s psychosocial history should cover marriages, divorces, deaths, education, as well as smoking and drinking habits and exposure to radiation, chemicals and suspected pollutants. Packwood offers help in the form of summary sheets, cover letters and compilation sheets.
Assembling a good comprehensive picture should make it easier for anyone whose doctor asks about family illnesses. What better time to start thinking about it than the upcoming family holiday gatherings?
