Saturday, May 8, 2010

The Conference in Philadelphia

The morning of the first day began with registration. There was a flurry of activity … people were chatting, looking at exhibits and enjoying a yummy continental breakfast. There was a lot of excitement in the air.

The day began with Judy E Garber, MD, MPH who spoke on treating advanced breast cancer including medical and research news. She only spoke a few sentences when she broke down in tears. It happened when she started to speak about a breast cancer patient she’d been treating for many many years. They had exhausted all treatment options and this ladies journey was coming to an end. 

In the afternoon, Judy E Garber spoke again. This time she focused on treatments and strategies of bone mets.

After a short break we had author Bruce Feiler speak on his experience with bone cancer and author Donna Deegan spoke on her experience with metastatic breast cancer. 

On the second day, I attended a session given by Linda T Vahdat, MD on the treatments and strategies of liver and lung mets. 

After that there was only one more session and that included a panel of five experts with expertise in metastatic breast cancer. The panel addressed a variety of concerns including medical and complimentary therapies, symptom and side-effect management and emotional and legal issues. 

There were many other sessions offered but we picked and chose what interested us most. To be honest, I was overwhelmed with the amount of information offered. The Living Beyond Breast Cancer organizers said they’d be offering podcasts of the sessions but I checked today and nothing is on the website as of yet. I’ll continue checking and let you know when they appear. Here is a link to their blog where they give an overview of the conference.

4 comments:

Vilma said...

This is a great synopsis of the two-day conference Daria. I have not completed my evaluation cause I got confused on the speakers and the days. I have so much going on in my life. Thanks again for being such a great room-mate!

Yarissa said...

Vilma, if you need a copy of the program to help you remember the names, please contact Jenna@LBBC.org

Anonymous said...

Hi, I am the program coordinator for Living Beyond Breast Cancer. One of my colleagues passed your blog along to me. We have now posted the MP3's from the conference on our website. You will need to click on the publications tab of our website and then on the audio and transcripts tab. From there please chose advanced breast cancer and you will find the audio recordings. Please feel free to contact me at jenna@lbbc.org with any questions! I am so happy to read the wonderful things you wrote about our conference!

Anonymous said...

Hi Daria,

This is Amy from Living Beyond Breast Cancer. I wanted to let you, and others, know that many of the podcasts are now up and available from our website. You can find them most easily by cutting and pasting this URL into your browser http://lbbc.org/transcript-category.asp?transcriptcategory=advanced. Each entry has a date noted on the right hand side for your reference. All podcasts are free of charge for listening and download. We hope you will find the recordings useful and informative as you continue to utilize the information and support provided by the conference. Take care, keep well and stay tuned for lbbc.org for upcoming programs and updates!

Amy @ Living Beyond Breast Cancer