Jessie C. Gruman

Cancer Survivorship: What I Wish I'd Known Earlier Jessie C. Gruman

It is a real challenge, in the years following a cancer diagnosis, to assemble an approach to health that protects us from the lingering effects of both the disease and the treatment and alerts us to a recurrence or new cancer. While we all need some basic monitoring, our histories and preferences suggest that survivorship care should be customized to meet our unique needs. Unfortunately, despite investment in developing that field, we find ourselves seeing clinicians who do not recognize the many dimensions of survivorship care, who don?t feel qualified to provide it or who are simply not interested in doing so. In these essays, I reflect on what I wish I?d known earlier about getting good care following active cancer treatment for five different cancer diagnoses, based on my own experience and what I have learned from others.