With hormone pills, radiation, surgery and grit: Skin lotion for cancer patients

Kairol Rosenthal, 35, is a choreographer and writer in Chicago. For the last seven years she has battled thyroid cancer with hormone pills, radiation, surgery and grit. She has had to contend with 101-degree fevers, heart palpitations, and a severe lack of appetite.

The hormone therapy to slow the growth of the tumor, leaves red blotches on her face and bone-dry patches along her jaw line.

"I have not yet made my peace with skin that doesn't look good," she said. She spends much of her free time in hunting for news about thyroid cancer. She is writing a book about living with the disease.

Radiation can cause what looks and feels like a sunburn on the area that the beam passes through to get to cancerous cells. Chemotherapy can make the skin and lips feel dry and itchy because it indiscriminately tries to damage all fast-growing cells, including skin cells.

Kairol heard a radio ad for Lindi Skin, a skincare line of products designed for cancer patients. Several companies now make skincare products for cancer patients.

Depending on who you ask, such products give patients one more tool to ease side effects, or a false hope that a costly lotion will be more effective than a mild drugstore lotion.

Oncologists and dermatologists are now looking into these products because cancer-fighting drugs called targeted therapies can cause rashes so severe that some patients threaten to drop out if they are left untreated. As of now, there is no scientific study that shows these products are any better than less expensive and less glamorous products like Cetaphil or CeraVe.

Yet some patients prefer them. Dianne Dassa, a breast cancer patient in New York, said the Lindi body wash and serum helped heal her radiation burn and her psyche. And "they were so beautifully packaged, I felt like I was getting a gift."

Advice: As a gift, you can give the fancy lotions to the cancer patient you care for. Cancer patients themselves can buy the less expensive drugstore products that have been shown to be effective.

Read a story of an entrepreneurial cancer survivor.

Thanks to Kayleen Schaefer for the source article in today's NY Times.

They brushed off my questions: Incorrect medical decision-making for a thyroid problem

I spent months being treated for acid reflux-like symptoms, and I found myself seeing doctor after doctor. They all treated me for acid reflux – a commonly diagnosed problem of stomach acid flowing backward from the stomach into the esophagus – and brushed off my questions asking if my problem couldn't be related to a thyroid condition. There is a history of thyroid problems in my family and my instincts kept telling me my problems were related to my thyroid gland. The doctors continued to tell me I just had acid reflux and I should keep taking the "little purple pill." I couldn't understand how I could so suddenly develop acid reflux. After all, I had always been able to eat anything I wanted and now even eating cereal and drinking water made me hurt.

After seeing several different local specialists and undergoing many, many tests, I referred myself to an endocrinologist (someone who specializes in thyroid diseases) at a large medical center for another opinion. Within five minutes of meeting this endocrinologist, he was convinced all of my symptoms were related to being hyperthyroid (too much thyroid hormone). He explained to me that when you are hyperthyroid all the systems in your body are hyper (overworking) and can give you symptoms I was experiencing like acid reflux! I was never so relieved – I had finally found someone who believed that my symptoms were related to a thyroid problem. Further testing confirmed his diagnosis, and surgery was scheduled to remove my thyroid gland. It seems my instincts were right after all. Since having surgery (I now need daily thyroid hormone replacement) my symptoms have disappeared and I no longer need "the little purple pill" for acid reflux.

My only regret is not finding the right doctor sooner. I could have avoided many unnecessary tests and months of suffering.

Dr. Pikula's Advice: Sometimes you have to keep asking and pursuing answers until a situation makes sense.

Browse for related stories in the index at the very bottom of this page, or read a thyroid story.

Thanks to Donna Pikula, DDS, for the source, “After the Diagnosis: How to Look Out for Yourself or a Loved One.”

We did this to change thousands: A breast cancer survivor

During her treatment for breast cancer, Kim Carlos, 36, ate lunch once a week at the Nordstrom department store in Kansas City, Missouri, with three other young women with breast cancer. They wrote a book based on their discussions, "Nordie's at Noon," and published it themselves. Their grass-roots marketing was so successful that Da Capo Press bought the book and is redistributing it.

Kim's work brought her so many requests for speaking and advocacy work that she decided to leave her position at a law firm in Kansas City to dedicate herself to motivational speaking and issues-oriented public relations.

"We didn’t go through this to change one life, we did this to change thousands," she said.

Advice: Share your survival stories, your pain and your joy, with your support group of friends, like Kim.

Read another breast cancer survivor story, or read the source article by Marci Alboher in the Oct. 25 issue of the New York Times.