Chemo

Through Wednesday, Philly.com and The Inquirer will mark breast cancer awareness month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series will culminate in a special Philly.com/Inquirer section on Thursday, and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . Jennifer Bergstrom was just starting her life over. Her six-year marriage in Kansas City had ended, so she took a job that moved her to South Florida. This happened to now be the home of her first love, her college boyfriend, and their love rekindled.

A few weeks ago, Triton senior quarterback Mario Barel had a chemotherapy treatment that kept him hospitalized on a Monday. He stayed overnight at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia and returned to Triton's practice field that Tuesday. No big deal, said Barel, 17, who downplays a rare disease he has been battling since his freshman year. "I feel real good. I feel normal," he said in a recent interview. "Nothing is going to cause me not to play. " Well, almost nothing.

There's no chance anyone in Tyler Coleman's family will forget his first collegiate baseball game. Coleman only had one at-bat for West Chester last season and struck out. The TV movie version probably would have him hitting a double or triple or something. This was real life. His mother, Diana, remembers going to the bathroom just before the game so she wouldn't miss any of it. Her cellphone rang while she was in the ladies' room. The tests done to figure out why there was swelling in her son's neck had come back with a definitive answer.

While people commonly think that cancer patients lose weight because chemo makes them so sick, many patients actually have the opposite problem. It is true that some people with end-stage cancer get very thin, but, earlier in the course of treatment, many may find themselves surprised by unwanted flab. Cancer Support Community of Philadelphia has taken on the issue in several programs this winter. One late Monday afternoon will focus on fitness and weight management for cancer survivors.

Through Oct. 17, The Inquirer will mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series will culminate in a special Inquirer section Thursday, and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . "2012 was supposed to be my year!" says Amy Kuhnel of Kettering, Ohio. "I recently got engaged to the man of my dreams. We bought our first house together, and I got my dream job. I also turned 40, so I went in February to get my first mammogram.

Through Oct. 17, Philly.com/health and the Inquirer will mark breast cancer awareness month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series culminates in a special Philly.com/Inquirer/Daily News section Oct. 18, and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . For Cynthia Besteman, a real estate broker in New York, the diagnosis of breast cancer came out of nowhere. She was 46, a vegetarian, with no history of cancer in her family, a daily exerciser.

A small study focused on the big question of whether intravenous Vitamin C fights cancer has yielded "somewhat encouraging findings," some Thomas Jefferson University researchers conclude. Many alternative medicine practitioners are firmly convinced that ascorbic acid infusions work, based on anecdotal cases of remissions and cures. But the evidence remains inconclusive. In the new study, nine patients with advanced pancreatic cancer received intravenous C plus two standard chemotherapy drugs for eight weeks.

Through Oct. 17, Philly.com and the Inquirer will publish a profile a day of transformative moments reported by breast cancer patients. The full series can be seen at www.philly.com/breastcancer Jessica Territo was diagnosed with breast cancer a month after giving birth. She noticed a little swelling when breast-feeding, and her obstetrician sent her for tests. A needle biopsy revealed Stage Two cancer. She was 33, mother of a newborn and a 3-year-old. Jessica, in South Florida, took the most aggressive path - chemotherapy to shrink the tumor and then surgery to remove it. The chemo was so powerful that it hospitalized her for four days.

SOME PARTIES are more memorable than others. Such was the case Saturday night at a celebration for Tess Fanning, who recently graduated from Archbishop Wood. Among those attending were Bob and Monica Rotzal, whose 21-year-old son Alex is scheduled to undergo chemo on Monday to treat non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Alex, a former manager of La Salle High's crew team, now attends Temple. As is often the case, he was told that with chemo comes hair loss. That gave someone a hair-brained idea, and before you could say James Carville or Telly Savalas, 18 guys — young and old, some jocks, some not — were lined up to have their heads shaved as a show of support.

Tom Hawkins first stepped out on the ice and looked around. He found himself one of six goalies trying out for the Monsignor Bonner team in September. Hawkins was feeling nervous and wondering if he was even going to make the team. He was a freshman and hockey was his game, but he didn't expect that kind of a challenge. A month later, Hawkins found out he had a real challenge. He noticed some lumps on his neck and thought he had mononucleosis. He went to the doctors and underwent a battery of tests and found out he had Hodgkins Disease, which is a cancer of the lymphnodes (in Hawkins case around the neck and his chest)

There's no chance anyone in Tyler Coleman's family will forget his first collegiate baseball game. Coleman only had one at-bat for West Chester last season and struck out. The TV movie version probably would have him hitting a double or triple or something. This was real life. His mother, Diana, remembers going to the bathroom just before the game so she wouldn't miss any of it. Her cellphone rang while she was in the ladies' room. The tests done to figure out why there was swelling in her son's neck had come back with a definitive answer.

Studies with impressive results often flawed, research shows If a medical study seems too good to be true, it probably is, according to new research. In a statistical analysis of nearly 230,000 trials, results that claimed a "very large effect" rarely held up when other teams tried to replicate them, researchers reported last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "The effects largely go away; they become much smaller," said John Ioannidis, the Stanford researcher and the report's senior author.

Through Wednesday, Philly.com and The Inquirer will mark breast cancer awareness month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series will culminate in a special Philly.com/Inquirer section on Thursday, and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . Jennifer Bergstrom was just starting her life over. Her six-year marriage in Kansas City had ended, so she took a job that moved her to South Florida. This happened to now be the home of her first love, her college boyfriend, and their love rekindled.

Through Oct. 17, The Inquirer will mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series will culminate in a special Inquirer section Thursday, and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . "2012 was supposed to be my year!" says Amy Kuhnel of Kettering, Ohio. "I recently got engaged to the man of my dreams. We bought our first house together, and I got my dream job. I also turned 40, so I went in February to get my first mammogram.

Through Oct. 17, Philly.com and The Inquirer will mark breast cancer awareness month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series will culminate in a special Philly.com/Inquirer/Daily News section on Oct. 18, and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . Dawn Capone crashed into a tractor-trailer parked on I-95 and driven by, she says, "a man with a huge criminal record who was high. " The accident nearly killed her, but it also might have saved her life.

Through Oct. 17, Philly.com/health and The Inquirer will mark breast cancer awareness month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series will culminate in a special Philly.com/Inquirer/Daily News section Oct. 18 and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . "I remember the day that my phone rang," said Caryn Kaplan of Langhorne, "an ordinary workday. I learned that my breast cancer had returned and metastasized to my liver and bones.

Through Oct. 17, Philly.com and The Inquirer will mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series culminates in a Philly.com/Inquirer/Daily News section Oct. 18, and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . "I am a huge golfer," says Laura Martin, 53. "I played on the boys' team in high school, in college at Duke University. I play in a lot of local Philadelphia Women's Golf Association events, with a 6 handicap.

Through Oct. 17, Philly.com/health and the Inquirer will mark breast cancer awareness month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series culminates in a special Philly.com/Inquirer/Daily News section Oct. 18, and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . For Cynthia Besteman, a real estate broker in New York, the diagnosis of breast cancer came out of nowhere. She was 46, a vegetarian, with no history of cancer in her family, a daily exerciser.

Through Oct. 17, Philly.com and the Inquirer will publish a profile a day of transformative moments reported by breast cancer patients. The full series can be seen at www.philly.com/breastcancer Jessica Territo was diagnosed with breast cancer a month after giving birth. She noticed a little swelling when breast-feeding, and her obstetrician sent her for tests. A needle biopsy revealed Stage Two cancer. She was 33, mother of a newborn and a 3-year-old. Jessica, in South Florida, took the most aggressive path - chemotherapy to shrink the tumor and then surgery to remove it. The chemo was so powerful that it hospitalized her for four days.

SOME PARTIES are more memorable than others. Such was the case Saturday night at a celebration for Tess Fanning, who recently graduated from Archbishop Wood. Among those attending were Bob and Monica Rotzal, whose 21-year-old son Alex is scheduled to undergo chemo on Monday to treat non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Alex, a former manager of La Salle High's crew team, now attends Temple. As is often the case, he was told that with chemo comes hair loss. That gave someone a hair-brained idea, and before you could say James Carville or Telly Savalas, 18 guys — young and old, some jocks, some not — were lined up to have their heads shaved as a show of support.