Learn More About Thyroid Cancer and Thyroid Cancer Treatments

Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center invites patients, family members and anyone interested in learning about thyroid cancer risk, diagnosis and treatment to attend Focus on Thyroid Cancer.

Focus on Thyroid Cancer is a free educational conference featuring Penn’s leading thyroid cancer experts with specialties in surgery, endocrinology, pathology, cytology and nuclear medicine.

Penn’s Focus on Thyroid Cancer Conference addresses the personal and medical issues facing people with thyroid cancer including those in treatment, survivors, their loved ones, relatives and caregivers.

The conference provides patient-focused information on the latest advances in thyroid cancer risk, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, symptom management and psychosocial issues. It is also an opportunity to network and gain support from other thyroid cancer patients and survivors.

Who Should Attend

• Those at risk for thyroid cancer
• People who are newly diagnosed, currently in treatment or a long-term survivor
• Family members, caregivers or healthcare professionals

Join Us

Time: 7:30 am to 3:45 pm
Date: Friday, June 8, 2012
Location: Hilton Hotel located at 4200 City Avenue, Philadelphia, PA
Registration: Register online or call 800-789-PENN (7366)
Cost: FREE

Unable to Attend?

If you are unable to attend in person, join the conference via free livestream. View the free conference livestream from 7:30 am to 3:45 pm ET on June 8.

Join a live web chat from the conference with a panel of expert clinicians who will answer questions about risk, diagnosis and treatment. To participate in the live web chat or submit a question before the conference, visit OncoLink.org/Webchat.

The web chat will take place at 12:15 pm EDT, June 8.

Follow Penn Medicine on Twitter for event information before the conference date, and live tweeting throughout the conference with the hashtag #ThyroidACC.

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Learn About Skin Cancer Prevention at Penn

Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center invites you and your loved ones to attend CANPrevent Skin Cancer, a free educational conference for anyone interested in learning about preventing skin cancer.

CANPrevent Skin Cancer is designed to address the personal and medical issues facing those at risk for skin cancer. The conference provides patient-focused information about the latest advances in skin cancer risk, screening and prevention.

Who Should Attend

Anyone interested in learning about skin cancer and its prevention - especially those with:

• Natural blond or red hair color
• Presence of atypical or numerous moles
• Sun sensitivity (easily burns, difficulty tanning)
• History of excessive sun exposure, including sunburns
• History of using tanning booths
• History of diseases that suppress the immune system
• Personal or family history of melanoma, basal cell or squamous cell skin cancers

Join Us

Time: 8 to 11:30 am
Date: Friday, May 18, 2012
Location: Hilton Hotel located at 4200 City Avenue, Philadelphia, PA
Registration: OncoLink.org/Conference/SkinCancer or call 800-789-PENN (7366)
Cost: FREE

Get the facts on skin cancer and melanoma risk, prevention and screening – they could save your life or the life of someone you know.

Unable to Attend?

Join the live web-chat with a panel of expert clinicians from the conference who will answer questions about skin cancer risk, diagnosis and treatment. To participate in the web chat or submit a question before the web chat, visit OncoLink.org/Webchat.

The web chat is scheduled for 1:15 pm ET, May 18.

Follow Penn Medicine on Twitter for event information before the conference date, and live tweeting throughout the conference with the hashtag #CANPreventACC.

Please “re-tweet” and share Penn Medicine's messages about skin cancer prevention and awareness with your followers.

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Free Melanoma Patient Education Conference

Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center invites patients, family members and anyone interested in learning about melanoma risk, prevention, diagnosis and treatment to attend Focus On Melanoma.

Focus On Melanoma is a free educational conference featuring guest speaker ABC News Reporter Sam Donaldson, and Fox 29 Philadelphia’s “Dr. Mike” Cirigliano.

Penn’s Focus On Melanoma Conference addresses the personal and medical issues facing people with melanoma including those in treatment, survivors, their loved ones, relatives and caregivers.

The conference provides patient-focused information on the latest advances in melanoma risk, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, symptom management and psychosocial issues. It is also an opportunity to network and gain support from other melanoma patients and survivors.

Who Should Attend

• People newly diagnosed with melanoma
• Those at risk for melanoma
• Melanoma survivors
• Family members, caregivers or healthcare providers of melanoma patients/survivors
• Those diagnosed with a pigmented lesion and their family members/caregivers

Join Us

Time: 8 am to 2:45 pm
Date: Friday May 18, 2012
Location: Hilton Hotel located at 4200 City Avenue, Philadelphia, PA
Registration: OncoLink.org/Conference/Melanoma
 or call 800-789-PENN (7366)
Cost: FREE

Unable to Attend?

If you are unable to attend in person, join the conference via free livestream. View the conference livestream for free at PennMedicine.org/Abramson/MelanomaLIVE from 8 am to 2:45 pm ET on May 18th .

Join a live web chat from the conference with a panel of expert clinicians who will answer questions about risk, diagnosis and treatment. To participate in the live web chat or submit a question before the conference, visit OncoLink.org/Webchat.

The web chat will take place at 1:15 pm EDT, May 18.

Follow Penn Medicine on Twitter for event information before the conference date, and live tweeting throughout the conference with the hashtag #MelanomaACC.

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Why Laughter Really is Good Medicine

Christine Wilson, cancer survivor, shares her experiences from the Humor, Heart and Hope Symposium held this spring and sponsored by the Abramson Cancer Center and Cancer Support Community of Philadelphia.

Does the image of a roomful of 200 cancer survivors and caregivers doubled over in laughter seem unlikely?

At the Humor, Heart and Hope Symposium held this spring, there were a lot of laughs. The symposium, sponsored by the Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center and the Cancer Support Community of Philadelphia (formerly the Wellness Community), focused on the value of humor and its role in overcoming adversity.

The Positive Power of Humor

Joel Goodman, Ed.D, founder of The Humor Project, an organization whose mission is "to make a positive difference in the world by helping people to get more smileage out their lives and jobs," opened the program by talking about the positive power of humor.

Life, he said, throws all of us "pop quizzes," the unexpected events such as a cancer diagnosis or loss of a loved one that brings with them stress and anxiety. Even in the most difficult of times, Goodman says, humor is a "way of bumping us into the here and now," and "an ally against that stress."

Goodman encouraged the audience to find humor in everyday life and to "invite the childlike perspective," the ability see the situation as an eight year old would. Tell jokes, or if you can't remember them, find buttons or bumper stickers that are funny, or just spend five minutes a day looking for the humor that is all around you--and learn to laugh at yourself.

Goodman finished by asking the audience to read the words he wrote, OPPORTUNITY ISNOWHERE. Depending on your perspective, that phrase can be broken down as Opportunity is Nowhere, or...Opportunity is now here.

Laughter is Good Medicine

Leslie Gibson, RN, a cancer survivor, spoke about laughter as good medicine, and the body of research that supports the idea that laughter has physical as well as emotional benefits.

She said studies show laughter can improve heart function and reduce blood pressure, and that laughing affects the same part of the brain that responds to chocolate, caffeine, opiates and sex.

Gibson recalled her own childhood in which she was teased by her peers because she was in her words, "short, fat, and wore glasses," and the words of a kind shoe repair man, who urged her to get the kids to laugh with her--not at her. To cope with her own diagnosis of thyroid cancer, she played jokes on her surgeons and her husband to, in her view, humanize the situation.

Gibson concluded her talk by saying, "Laughter doesn't cure, but it does help us find the hope. We need to look for the magic in every day, in everything that is around us. Don't let cancer take away the joy in life."

Balancing Stress with Humor

Humor Project Co-Director, Margie Ingram, picked up on that theme in her talk on HUMOResilience and how to tickle stress before it tackles you. She began by urging the audience to "optimize optimism." We all need to seek what she termed, "intentional balance." A diagnosis of cancer threatens that balance by putting us onto a high stress plane for an extended period of time--a situation that triggers both negative physical and emotional responses.

Humor helps us come down from that high stress plane--gives us time to relax and recover.
The final speaker, Michael Pritchard, put into practice what the previous speakers had advocated--he made the audience laugh at him and at themselves. An accomplished professional comedian as well as a writer and social worker, Pritchard began by saying that "Fear is the little dark room where negatives are developed," and quoted Gandhi's maxim that there is "more to life than just increasing the speed."

Sometimes, Pritchard said, we have "to let our souls catch up," and humor provides those opportunities. He brought the audience to laughter with his perfect characterizations ranging from crying infants to teenage boys and girls engaged in phone conversations. He ended by saying that "Humor heals the human spirit as well as the body."

Learn more about The Humor Project.

Learn more about the Cancer Support Community and its many programs for patients and caregivers.

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Join the Abramson Cancer Center on Twitter

Today, Penn Medicine is live tweeting from three Focus On Cancer conferences.

 

 

 

 

 

Focus on Gastrointestical Cancer Conference

Penn’s Focus On Gastrointestinal Cancer Conference provides patient-focused information about the latest advances in gastrointestinal cancer risk, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, symptom management and psychosocial issues; as well as the opportunity to network and gain support from other gastrointestinal cancer survivors.

Follow @PennMedicine for live tweeting throughout the conference with the hashtag #GICancerACC.

Chat with the Experts
Visit www.OncoLink.org/Webchat to participate in a live webchat with gastrointestinal cancer experts from the conference. The webchat takes place at 11:45 AM, ET March 2.

Focus on Pancreatic Cancer Conference

Penn’s Focus On Pancreatic Cancer Conference provides patient-focused information about the latest advances in pancreatic cancer risk, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, symptom management and psychosocial issues; as well as the opportunity to network and gain support from other pancreatic cancer patients and survivors.


Follow @PennMedicine for  live tweeting throughout the conference with the hashtag #PanCancerACC.

You can also join the conference via free livestream at PennMedicine.org/Abramson/PanCaLive from 7:30 am to 3 pm EST on March 2.

Chat with the Experts
Visit www.OncoLink.org/Webchat to participate in a live webchat with pancreatic cancer experts from the conference. The web-chat will take place March 2, 1:15 pm, ET.

CANPrevent Colorectal Cancer Conference

Penn's CANPrevent Colorectal Cancer Conference provides information about colorectal cancer prevention, screening, managing high-risk, and genetic factors that contribute to colorectal cancer.

Follow @PennMedicine for live tweeting throughout the conference with the hashtag #CANPreventACC.

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