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Cancer Diagnosis Doesn’t Stop Woman From Starting A Family

In 2007, Melanie Jaggard went to the hospital for a punctured ear drum and was given the shock of her life. She had cancer; a very rare form that was located at the base of her brain.

Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is the second most common cause of salivary gland cancer but can affect other areas of the body. Melanie is one of only 20 to 25 people in the United Kingdom to have ACC and had a 2-inch tumor removed from her head following a delicate 10-hour operation. She was single at the time, cancer free and one year later met the love of her life, Charlie Jaggard, on an online dating site. Charlie proposed three months after their first date and life was good, until she received the news that the cancer had returned, this time metastasizing to her lungs. Surgery was not an option because the tumors were too numerous and radiation was too risky to the lungs. However the couple was not discouraged. They married in January 2009 and Melanie decided to be a victor rather than a victim. Although 89 % of people with ACC survive after 5 years only 40% survive after Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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