No abstract

This evaluation of a free cancer supportive care program initiated in a hospital outpatient setting provides initial evidence of patient satisfaction and improvement in quality of life.

Cancer poses a powerful threat to the emotional equilibrium of patients and their families. A key role of the family and medical team is to provide a supportive environment as the patient confronts the reality of death. Few interventions have been developed to help families support patients in dealing with fears of death and dying. We present one such approach, the Life Tape Project (LTP), that helps bring families closer together, increases communication, and acts as an existential intervention leading to greater sense of legacy, meaning, self-awareness, identity, and connection. Additionally, the results of a pilot study exploring the benefits of the LTP are presented, and we describe symbolic immortality, an aspect of existential coping, to illuminate how existential and social support factors can work together to benefit patients and their families.

No abstract

In our patient, multiple bilateral nodular pulmonary densities appeared on a chest x-ray at the time of diagnosis of stage IV diffuse lymphocytic lymphoma. After localized radiation therapy, the patient received no further systemic therapy. The pulmonary nodules slowly became larger and more numerous. Nine years later the patient developed proven multiple myeloma. Pulmonary hyalinizing granulomas have not heretofore been associated with proven lymphoreticular neoplasia, although this has long been suspected. The occurrence of two B-cell tumors at different points in time associated with systemic amyloidosis is an extremely rare event. The authors discuss the possibility that these conditions represent an abnormality in a common cell of origin with differing expression over time. Coincidence, however, remains a likely explanation for the different immunopathies that occurred in our patient.