There are a few events coming up that I thought many of you might like to know about. The first is from the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation. It's a webinar called "Relapsed Follicular Lymphoma: Essential Insights." It's happening on Thursday, September 26, at 1:30pm Eastern Time (US and Canada). As the name suggests, the webinar will focus on relapsed FL -- the latest treatment, how to identify possible signs of relapse. And there will be a question-and-answer period, too. The speakers look fantastic -- Dr. Mitchell Smith, the Chief Medical Officer of the Foundation; Dr. Philippe Armand, head o ..read more

I used to subscribe to the Journal of the American Medical Association, and I still have access to some of the content from JAMA and  some of its specialty journals (like JAMA Oncology).  The JAMA Oncology journal has something called the "Patient Page," with interesting information aimed at patients with cancer. I'm not sure how many patients actually see these pages, since they appear in the medical journal. Maybe there are oncologists who share the information with patients? I have no idea. Which is too bad, because the information can be useful. The most recent Patient Page, for ..read more

Today is the first day of Lymphoma Awareness Month -- and/or Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma Awareness Month, Lymphoma and Leukemia Awareness Month, and Blood Cancer Awareness Month, depending on who is trying to make you aware.  But whatever you call it, September is the month that is set aside for us to be more aware of our disease. I always have the same reaction to this month, something like "I am very aware of my lymphoma, thank you. I literally think about it every day, even after 16 years." And then I remind myself that awareness months like this aren't meant for us as patients. They are me ..read more

I've said more than a few times that I know my perspective on Follicular Lymphoma is very much an American one. I tend to focus on treatment approvals by the FDA in the United States, and write about issues that affect Amercan patients. Which makes sense, of course, since I live in the U.S. But I also try to keep up with things that are happening outside my country when I can. I have readers from about 80 different countries, according to my Google analytics. I want to provide relevant information to as many of you as I can. So here's some news from the last couple of weeks that may excite som ..read more

As I have said a few times in recent posts, I have been thinking a lot more lately about issues of survivorship -- not just what happens between diagnosis and treatment, but what happens after we're told we're "all better."  That involves a lot of other issues, and they certainly include physical issues. We all deal with the physical issues that come with having cancer. And most of us also have to deal with the side effects of treatment -- short-term and long-term. (I'm dealing more and more with long-term side effects these days.) But there are lots more non-physical side effects that we ..read more

The medical journal Annals of Oncology published some updated data on the bispecific Odronextamab last week. It will be very interesting to see the implications. You may remember Odronextamab being in the news a few months ago. It's a bispecific antibody, attaching to the CD20 protein on a Follicular Lymphoma cell and a CD3 protein on a T cell. (Read a little more about Bispecifics here as a reminder.)   In March, the FDA denied the application for Odronextamab to be approved, but only temporarily. The treatment had been granted accelerated review in October 2023, but in March, the FDA de ..read more

Some very cool and potentially important research in Blood Cancer Journal this month. It's called "Identification of Genetic Subtypes in Follicular Lymphoma." It's a straightforward title for some research that is fairly complicated, though its implications are easier to understand. There is a lot of genetics in here, and I found myself getting lost at times, but as I said, its implications are easier to understand. I'll do my best to give you the important stuff. Some background, first. Cancer researched changed for the better about 20 years ago, when the Human Genome Project finished mapping ..read more

Interesting study last month from the Journal of Patient-Reported Outcomes. Before I get into it, let me say how great it is that there is a medical journal called The Journal of Patient-Reported Outcomes. It's an official publication of the International Society for Quality of Life Research, which encourages research into Quality of Life with regard to health and medicine. They say this kind of research is important because it ill help us "Understand the potential benefits and risks of a proposed treatment;Weigh the impact of a decision on symptoms, function and life expectancy;Live their liv ..read more

I had a six-month appointment with my oncologist yesterday. Everything looks good. I knew this appointment was going to be a little bit different. My regular oncologist, Dr. H, has been on vacation, so when I made the appointment six months ago, I made with his Physician's Assistant. I don't know if other parts of the world have PAs.They do many of the same things that a medical doctor can do, though they don't go to school for as long, and the usually work under the supervision of a medical doctor. It makes sense that I would see a PA for an appointment like this -- I haven't been feeling any ..read more

I don't get much good stuff from Twitter/X these days, but this morning, I learned there that today is Holistic Therapy Day.  And I learned it through a post from Lymphoma Action, the United kingdom's only charity devoted to Lymphoma (as they describe themselves). I'm sure that those of you in the UK are familiar with them, and I hope that the resources they provide have been helpful to you.  But their Twitter/X post today was helpful to me, linking to an article about Holistic Therapy and its relationship to Complimentary Medicine.  As I have said many times before, I am not a ..read more