CalvertHealth Blog

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  • June Update - 1000 Hours Outside Challenge

    Rebecca Burgess  |  6/2/2023

    This update may be a little late but aren’t we all sometimes 😊 We are currently at around 320 hours outside for the year! This is less than I was hoping for at the halfway point of the year, but I know we will be able to catch up...

  • The First Testicular Cancer Cure

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  4/17/2023

    An adage in health care declares if you wish to be famous in the medical field you should discover a new disease and attach your name to it. Consequently, most of the proper names we read and hear in this discipline are those of p...

  • Spring Update - 1000 Hours Outside Challenge

    Rebecca Burgess  |  4/14/2023

    SPRING IS HERE! As of today, April 7, we have almost 160 hours outside since we launched the 1000 Hours Outside Challenge on January 23. These warmer days over the past few weeks have really given us all new life! I have spent a f...

  • April Is Testicular Cancer Awareness Month

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  4/10/2023

    Many of us think of cancer as predominantly a disease of older people. Televised advertisements for children’s cancer research institutions remind us cancer is no respecter of youth, however. In the vigor and vitality of young adu...

  • William Dameshek (1900-1969)

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  3/20/2023

    The American Society of Hematology, the leading scientific association concentrated on the various disorders of the blood, annually recognizes outstanding individual contributions to the field by awarding the prestigious Dameshek ...

  • Second Month Update - 1000 Hours Outside Challenge

    Rebecca Burgess  |  3/14/2023

    Almost two months down, ten more to go! We are nearly 60 days into the 1000 hours outside challenge and have accumulated 83 hours outside. While we aren’t regularly hitting the 2-3 hour daily goal, I have been happy with our effor...

  • Fifty Thousand Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong, Can They?

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  3/13/2023

    Medscape, an email service for medical news, published some observations on findings from a health practices survey conducted in France two years ago. Many people in France appear to be as confused about lifestyle and cancer risk ...

  • CalvertHealth - Duke Cancer Care Affiliation Update

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  3/8/2023

    Hardly a clinic day passes without someone mentioning to me her enthusiasm for the new relationship Calvert Health’s oncology program has with Duke University. We anticipated the public would embrace this affiliation. To no one’s ...

  • First Month Update - 1000 Hours Outside Challenge

    Rebecca Burgess  |  2/8/2023

    The first month is officially in the books! From the launch date of the CalvertHealth 1000 Hours Outside Challenge on January 23rd, my family logged 12 hours outside. We typically logged at least an hour outside on weekdays and th...

  • Humble Pie

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  2/6/2023

    About five years ago, I developed a personal tradition of beginning each new year by reading some of the classics of literature, broadly considered as including history, science, and philosophy along with literary works. Some of t...

  • 1000 Hours Outside Challenge

    Rebecca Burgess  |  1/13/2023

    Everyone knows fresh air is good for you, but it is hard to consolidate just how good time spent outside can be for you. It is good for your mental and physical health in many ways. Since I was a young child, I have always enjoyed...

  • Thanksgiving Reflections

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  11/24/2022

    We’ve roasted and carved the turkey, mashed the red potatoes, cooked the fresh snap green beans to a nice al dente crispness, served up the sweetly tangy cranberry sauce, and baked the cherry crumble pie. Now that we’ve eaten our ...

  • Lung Cancer in Nonsmokers

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  11/21/2022

    Although people may tire of hearing me preach anti-smoking sermons, I rarely tire of warning them about the health dangers of tobacco. For those who smoke, quitting remains the most important positive step someone can take to redu...

  • Colorectal Cancer and the Black Community in America

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  11/2/2022

    The forthcoming and much-anticipated release of Wakanda Forever , the sequel to Black Panther , one of the most popular and honored entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero series, poignantly reminds us of the loss of th...

  • Hope and Joy in the Brisk October Air

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  10/31/2022

    Over the past several decades, as I posted last week, community foot races have become a standard part of breast cancer awareness and fundraising. Enthusiastic walkers and runners festooned in pink are now as much a part of Octobe...

  • Susan Goodman Komen and the Pursuit of a Cure for Breast Cancer

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  10/20/2022

    If it is a secret, it is the worst kept secret in the world. October has come to be known almost universally as breast cancer awareness month. Pink rivals orange and black as the principal color of the season. The familiar ribbon ...

  • Mary Woodard Lasker, “The Fairy Godmother of Medical Research”

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  9/19/2022

    The effort to combat cancer occurs on many fronts: the cancer patient’s home, the medical clinic, the operating room, the infusion center, the radiation suite, and the various diagnostic departments. These constitute the public “f...

  • A New Era in Calvert Health Oncology

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  9/16/2022

    An experienced gardener, or anyone who cares for houseplants, knows the value of beneficial change. A plant may grow only so large or luxuriant in a small pot, or it may need its soil replaced or a nutrient stick added to give it ...

  • Jane Cooke Wright, Chemotherapy Pioneer

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  9/7/2022

    The modern history of cancer care features many physicians, scientists, researchers, and lay champions, many of whom are deservedly famous and many of whom deserve to be much more widely known. Last month I wrote about Paul Ehrlic...

  • The Air We Breathe

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  8/30/2022

    Cancer is a fearsome, complicated disease. Even with all our knowledge, constantly expanding, there remain many aspects we don’t understand as well as we would like. Human nature wants to fill in the gaps. We speculate. Sometimes ...

  • The Debt We Owe to Paul Ehrlich

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  8/16/2022

    Hardly a week passes in the normal flow of my patient care responsibilities without a visit to the hospital laboratory (which has just experienced another successful inspection by the College of American Pathologists—congratulatio...

  • A Neu Advance in Breast Cancer Treatment

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  8/9/2022

    When CalvertHealth Oncology established an internet presence, the principal purpose of this effort was to enhance and extend the ability of the cancer care team to communicate with the people it serves. This blog shares that purpo...

  • A Nutritionist’s Perspective on Cancer

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  8/5/2022

    As part of my recent series on cancer and nutrition, I invited Karen Mohn, CalvertHealth’s Registered Dietician who works with persons undergoing various forms of chemotherapy and with oncology patients in general, to provide her ...

  • When Bigger Is Better

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  7/28/2022

    In an earlier article - How May I Be Sure I’m Being Treated Correctly? - I explained the advantages getting a second opinion may afford. A person with a new cancer diagnosis does not always have to travel outside the immediate are...

  • How May I Be Sure I’m Being Treated Correctly?

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  7/21/2022

    Receiving news of a cancer diagnosis alters your life. The evaluation process, the number of diagnostic procedures, the requirement to consult with several care providers in different specialties, all coupled with the natural anxi...

  • Nutrition Mythbusting

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  7/14/2022

    For several years, the Discovery Channel hosted a popular joint American-Australian television production called Mythbusters . Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman devoted each episode to exploring—and often debunking—popular ideas invol...

  • Table Talk

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  6/29/2022

    If you were to ask what the one action is a person can take to lower her risk of developing cancer by a significant amount, the answer is easy: Never use tobacco products, and, if you do use them, quit as soon as possible. But as ...

  • Food, Glorious Food

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  6/21/2022

    And you thought this was going to be about the musical “Oliver!” Some other time, perhaps. Few persons who visit this blog have likely heard of an Italian Renaissance painter named Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593) , but there’s an ...

  • Three Years On

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  6/7/2022

    My last post to this blog drew attention to the annual observance of National Cancer Survivors Day. As I type these words on my laptop, it is the evening of June fifth, which provides an occasion to reflect on my own experience wi...

  • National Cancer Survivors Day Is June Fifth

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  5/31/2022

    Music can define an era. To this day, swing and the big band sound evoke the 1940s. Groups such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones led the British Invasion of the 1960s. For better or worse, the music of the later 1970s was dis...

  • How Worrisome Is My Melanoma?

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  5/25/2022

    Not every case of malignant melanoma is alike. Depending on the specific characteristics of the disease as it presents in an individual human being, it can be more or (to a degree) less dangerous. Health care providers consider se...

  • What a Dermatologist Wants You to Know About Melanoma

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  5/9/2022

    My good friend and colleague, Dr. Faris Hawit, a board-certified dermatologist and Mohs micrographic surgeon who has practiced in Calvert County for several years, has graciously consented to sit down with me and field a few quest...

  • Melanoma Awareness Month

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  5/3/2022

    The poet T. S. Eliot famously wrote, “April is the cruelest month.” Although this is the first line of his most enigmatic poem, “The Waste Land,” which laments loss and destruction in the wake of the First World War, he proceeds t...

  • Heard It On the Radio

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  4/21/2022

    As part of Calvert Health System’s efforts in March to promote awareness about colorectal cancer, my colleague Dr. Arati Patel recently spoke as a guest expert on the “T-Bone and Heather” morning radio show on Star 98.3. For about...

  • Compassionate Competence

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  4/14/2022

    Several weeks ago, I noted in this space the recent conferring of the DAISY (“Diseases Attacking the Immune SYstem”) Award on the CHMC Infusion Center, the first such award in the organization to a team rather than an individual. ...

  • Treats without Tricks, Please

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  4/12/2022

    What does it mean to treat a disease? The simplest sense is to restore normal health, to “fix” what is wrong, to make the disease go away and not come back, as if it had never been present at all. Sometimes medicine can do that; a...

  • As Ye Sew…

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  3/31/2022

    I continue our annual focus on colorectal cancer by writing about a little-known physician who contributed greatly to the growth in knowledge over the past century of family patterns of cancer development. If you have never heard ...

  • Move ‘Em On, Head ‘Em Up

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  3/22/2022

    The 1950s and 1960s were the heyday of the classic western, both in the movies and on television. The great John Ford directed epic films such as The Searchers , and the “spaghetti westerns” of Sergio Leone made an international s...

  • Cancer and the Telephone Game

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  3/16/2022

    Raise your hand if you have ever played the “telephone game.” Form a line or circle with a sizeable group of people—a dozen or so, at least—and hand the first person a modestly complicated sentence. This person whispers the senten...

  • More on Awareness of Colorectal Cancer

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  3/9/2022

    Colorectal cancer is one of those good news-bad news situations in modern oncology. The good news is that over the past 30 years deaths from colorectal cancer have declined steadily, in large measure because of effective (when uti...

  • March Is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  3/1/2022

    As body parts go, the colon and rectum lack glamor and appeal. They’re not likely to win any popularity polls or beauty contests. Usually, the only time you hear mention of them or their function is when someone wants to sell you ...

  • Sugar, Sugar

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  2/25/2022

    As fictious rock bands go, The Archies did all right for themselves (my apologies if I shattered any cherished illusions in my fellow Boomers/Busters). In 1969, the band claimed the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart...

  • DAISY Award for CHMC Main Infusion Center

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  2/18/2022

    Successful delivery of quality cancer health care requires the participation of many people: office receptionists, medical assistants, laboratory personnel, radiology technicians, pharmacists, and physician extenders, among others...

  • I Will Do Remembering!

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  2/11/2022

    I indulge an occasional habit of scouring YouTube for scenes from old movies, particularly the classic musicals. A week or so ago, my mental filing system kicked up “Shall We Dance”—don’t ask me why, I just go with it—so, with the...

  • There’s No Place Like Home

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  2/8/2022

    The oncology service at CHMC dedicates itself to providing the highest quality of care to our family members, neighbors, and friends dealing with cancer in Calvert County and the surrounding communities. While we are grateful for ...

  • World Cancer Day | February 4, 2022

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  1/31/2022

    Many groups and organizations dedicate themselves to achieving progress in the ongoing fight against cancer. One such organization of longstanding importance to the cancer care community is the Union for International Cancer Contr...

  • You Don’t Have to Walk Alone

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  1/25/2022

    Imagine hiking through an unfamiliar forest. Which is better? To try to blaze a useable path through the underbrush, hacking away with a machete or ax, stumbling over uneven ground, blocked by large fallen tree trunks, confronted ...

  • Games of Chance?

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  1/18/2022

    One of the most frequently asked questions that follow receiving a cancer diagnosis never appears on FAQ lists: Why me? In a small space like this, I cannot begin to answer this question on its deepest, most profound level, nor is...

  • Making Your Life Care Wishes Known

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  1/3/2022

    How can you think about and make important decisions about the kind of cancer care you want? What about other, often equally important, matters? This is where having that good and reliable information I have mentioned before comes...

  • Grappling with Reality

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  12/27/2021

    In this two-part post, I tie together some ideas I introduced in earlier pieces, specifically encouragement to ask questions, to learn as much about your illness and its treatment as you want or need to know in order to understand...

  • This Is Not Your Cousin’s Roommate’s Cancer, Either

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  12/12/2021

    My previous post on the dramatic changes that have taken place in cancer care over the past 30 years was longer than most I’ve written so far. I could have written a good deal more. Long blog posts tend to lose reader interest, ho...

  • This Is Not Your Grandmother’s Cancer

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  11/30/2021

    When I reflect back on nearly thirty years of clinical experience in medical oncology, the most striking feature is how different our approach to cancer care is today compared to what I encountered when I entered into specialty tr...

  • The Death of the Humoral Theory of Disease

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  11/23/2021

    When last we left the humoral theory of disease, it had survived the debunking efforts of Vesalius and Baillie. Black bile might not exist, but investigators found other body fluids besides blood, phlegm, and yellow bile to take i...

  • Early Ideas about Cancer

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  11/16/2021

    Humanity and cancer are old adversaries. The earliest descriptions of the disease appear in ancient Egyptian manuscripts, perhaps some four thousand years old. The author catalogued his experience with many kinds of disease and li...

  • Ship Ahoy!

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  11/10/2021

    Engaging the health care system often feels like travel to an exotic foreign country. The setting is unfamiliar, different from home comforts. Most of the people encountered are strangers. The smells and sounds are strange, too. T...

  • The Symphony of the Human Body

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  10/28/2021

    One fine, long-anticipated evening, you and your equally well-dressed partner settle into your plush red-velvet front row balcony seats. A hum of excited expectation fills the theater. The eye gorges on rich brocades and exquisite...

  • What Is Hematology?

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  10/19/2021

    Hematology is the medical specialty having to do with the study and treatment of diseases of the blood and the organs that make blood cells; the word derives from the Greek “haima,” which has come over into American English as the...

  • What Is Oncology?

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  10/11/2021

    Practically everyone remembers from high school that words ending in “ology” have to do with the study of something, joined to some Greek or Latin root word that specifies the subject. Biology is the study of “bios” or life, for e...

  • Oncology Thoughts with Dr. Abbott

    Kenneth L Abbott, MD, FACP  |  10/7/2021

    Clear and useful communication has been called “the heart of the art of medicine.” More than just being a pleasing rhyme, this expression conveys a vital truth. Effective communication provides the key that ignites the engine of s...