Making the Most of It:
New symptom management program helps patients get back to their lives
Bowling. Shopping for clothes that fit. Gardening. Enjoying a vacation.
When a cancer diagnosis threatens, small
pleasures like these can seem trivial. That is,
until you can't do them anymore. Activities
like these help to make the fabric of life.
That's why the University of Michigan
Comprehensive Cancer Center has created a
Symptom Management & Supportive Care
Clinic. Its sole focus is to help people with
cancer feel better so that they can continue to
live a full life. Clinic staff works in collaboration
with patients' oncologists.
"We believe that it's not enough to just
treat the disease," said Suzette Walker, N.P.A.O.C.N.P., a nurse practitioner who leads
the clinic along with Susan Urba, M.D. "Our
goal is to help patients manage related symptoms
and side effects to help them maintain a
high quality of life."
We talked with patients about how their
lives have changed since they visited the
Symptom Management & Supportive Care
Clinic. Here's what they told us:
Brooke Bolley has had better nausea relief
since visiting the Symptom Management &
Supportive Care Clinic.
Brooke Bolley
GOALS: Reduce nausea, relieve pain
Brooke Bolley has the polished look of someone who understands
beauty intuitively. She is naturally pretty, to be sure; but
if you talk with her, you'll understand that the ginger highlights
in her hair and the subtle charcoal lining her eyes are her own
thoughtful design.
Her graceful appearance is all the more remarkable when you
consider the violence cancer has inflicted on her body. In April
2009, doctors found a tumor growing between Bolley's stomach
and esophagus. Four days after surgery to remove her stomach,
sepsis set in. The blood infection spread, requiring the amputation
of her right leg below her knee.
Since then, Bolley, a 26-year-old hairdresser, has struggled with
severe nausea and pain. She wasn't able to keep pain medications
down, so the Symptom Management & Supportive Care Clinic
switched her prescription to patches that would deliver the medication
through her skin. Walker said standard anti-nausea medications
didn't work for Bolley, so they took a different approach and
prescribed Olanzapine. Although Olanzapine is not widely used for
nausea-it's typically used to treat schizophrenia -- several clinical
studies have demonstrated its effectiveness for this symptom.
"I still get the nausea," she said. "But it's under control now."
Less than two weeks after visiting the clinic, Bolley's weight
rose from 86 to 89 pounds. Now able to fit into a size 2, she went shopping.
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To make an appointment in the Symptom Management & Supportive Care Clinic, call 734-232-6366.
