When the Focus Is on Care : Palliative Care and Cancer

How to live well with cancer--from diagnosis to its final stages

The goal of palliative care is to help you and your family experience the best quality of life possible throughout the course of your disease by controlling pain and symptoms, relieving suffering, and enabling you to live your life as normal as possible. When the Focus Is on Care: Palliative Care and Cancer explains how you can benefit from palliative care.

Written in a sensitive and conversational fashion, this book addresses your questions about progressive illness, making informed decisions and getting good medical care, accessing supportive care resources, and managing symptoms and side effects. It discusses coping strategies, performing a life review and leaving a legacy, talking to loved ones about cancer and dying, and coming to terms with your mortality.

This book provides the information, support, and tools you need to cope and live well with cancer, even when the disease is not responsive to treatment.

Kathleen M. Foley, M.D., is an attending neurologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a professor of neurology, neuroscience, and clinical pharmacology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Anthony Back, M.D., is an associate professor at the University of Washington and an affiliate member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Eduardo Bruera, M.D., is a professor of medicine and the F. T. McGraw Chair in the Treatment of Cancer at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Nessa Coyle, Ph.D., F.A.A.N., is the director of the Supportive Care Program of the Pain and Palliative Care Service, department of neurology, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Matthew J. Loscalzo, M.S.W., is the director of patient and family support services at the Rebecca and John Moore University of California San Diego Cancer Center and is on staff at the UCSD Medical School.

John L. Shuster Jr., M.D., is a research physician at the Tuscaloosa Veterans Administration Medical Center and teaches at the University of Alabama.

Bonnie Teschendorf, Ph.D., is the director of quality of life science at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta.

Jamie H. Von Roenn, M.D., is a professor of medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and is in the hematology/oncology division at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center in Chicago.