Updates

It has been a while since I last posted. I have been busy working on the Light the Night Fundraising campaign and trying to raise money with Team Gershon. We have a lot of people signed up to participate in the event and we are already raising money. I think in the couple of weeks since we started we have raised about $1500. I am hoping that we can do a lot more, but it is a great start. For more information about the Light the Night event see my previous post.

Last week, a press release linked Gleevec use to heart failure. The articles seemed to imply that using Gleevec increases your chances of heart failure. My poor grandmother was frantic when she saw the information flash by on CNN. I told her I would look into this and find out what I could. I immediately went to my scientific resources. As I was trained to do during graduate school, I never rely on the press to report on scientific findings. Instead, I went to the original article which was published in a journal called Nature Medicine. The study reported on 10 individuals who were taking Gleevec and also had heart failure as well as a mice study. It generally found that these individuals who take Gleevec might have an increased risk for heart problems. This does not mean that anyone should stop taking Gleevec, but heart monitoring might be warranted in addition to other regular testing. I also was in touch with my doctor who said that he was not going to be ordering any additional tests at this time, but we could talk about this at our appointment in September. Needless to say, this was a bit of a scare, but my estimation is that this information was blown a little out of proportion by the press.

In other news, I have written before about Erin Zammett Ruddy who was diagnosed with CML in 2001 and writes a column in Glamour Magazine about her experiences with CML and Gleevec. She has also written a book called My (So-Called) Normal Life, which is excellent. She has just started her own blog called Life with Cancer. You can click on the link to read and comment about her experiences. She is a very honest and funny writer if you have not previously read her columns in Glamour.