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VOLUME 23, NUMBER 21
MAY 28,1976
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
While Volunteers Learn about Cancer
'Patients' Day Off Fights Homesickness
By William Erwin
Junior Woman's Club volunteers
here are shaking off some myths
about cancer while they help Duke
cancer patients shake off
homesickness.
In a program called “Patients' Day
Off," a club volunteer drives to the
hospital every week. She picks up a
group of women patients and whisks
them away for a morning of
shopping, maybe, or a quiet evening
in a restaurant. Once, the group was
even treated to an organ recital by
Duke professor of music Fenner
Douglass.
"We wanted to help get them out of
the hospital environment, show them
that someone in the community
cared about them," said Mrs. June
Stilley, chairman of the club's Home
Life Committee.
l-ike the volunteers, the patients
are young. Most are a long way fi om
home. I'hey're being treated at the
Comprehensive C;ancer Center for a
rare cancer of the* lUerus called
choriocarcinoma.
For five days straight, the women
get anti-cancer drugs. Then they get
a week's rest before the drugs begin
again in a cycle that lasts for 12 weeks
or longer —long enough to bring on
a stiff case of homesickness.
■■ These patients niay be unique in
that they're hospitalized until they're
well, said Dr. Charles Hammond,
who directs their therapy. “This is a
highly curable malignancy, so we re
justified in pulling out all the stops."
I he disease is almost 100 per cent
Sharing Some
THOUGHTS
by
Dr. William G.
Aniyan
Vice President
tor
Health Affairs
Over the past couple of vears, there
has been an increasing interest in
Intercom among people outside the
immediate medical community.
Many of these are Duke graduates,
or former employees who have gone
elsewhere, or former faculty
members who have moved to other
medical schools. Still others are
patients, who have picked up a copy
of our weekly newspaper when they
were here, or just interested friends
of Duke.
I he way the people in this
cross-section of backgroinids have
demonstrated their interest in
Intercom is by asking to be added to
our mailing list. A few others are
(Continued on page 4)
ViS\yv,i--
IM GLAD IT'S NOT A FLUTE—Music professor Fenner
Douglass displayed one of the largest pipes in the university's
Flentrop Organ during a recital held for cancer patients and
their Junior Women's Club hosts. The volunteer organization
arranged for the recital as part of their continuing "Patients'
Day Off" program. At right is Mrs. Richard Prentis )r., one of
the volunteers. (Photo by ThadSparks)
curable if caught before it spreads
beyond the uterus, he said.
Outside the medical profession,
however, many think cancer of anv
sort spells doom, Mrs. Stillev
indicated.
“Some people say: ‘I don't want to
know if I have cancer. If I've got it.
I'm done for anyway.' But that fear
xanishes when you deal with girls like
these," she said. "You see there is a
ctn'e when you take care of votn self
and nip the thing in the bud."
Some club members, she said, were
afraid they might "catch " cancer from
the patients if they volunteered for
the program. "That's reallv sillv," she
added.
■ While volunteers sift cancer facts
from the myths, they're helping the
patients feel a lot less lonesome.
"Last July, eight patients came to
my home for dinner," Mrs. Stillev
said. " I hose who had children
seemed U) enjoy being around mine;
the family enviroinnent is something
tiiey miss."
They also miss their normal
routines, said Mrs. Hev Rosen, head
of rehabilitation for the (^ancei
Center. She and Hammonil
conceived the "Patients' Day Off " last
spring and asked the junior
Woman s (;iub to take part.
" These patients' roles and lifestvles
are cHsrupted by their long
hospitalization," Mrs. Rosen said.
■ They're used to leading active lives;
they're used to getting out. What
we re trying to do is help them feel
like the normal human beings that
they are. 'They're not freaks just
because they have cancer. "
Normal though the patients are,
they have an extra burden of worries
that the program helps soothe.
" These young women are here for
a significant interval of time," said
Hammond. “Much of that time,
they're not acutely ill, but they're
suffering separation anxiety from
their family and friends."
The program, he said, "helps them
leel that there's more to life than
hibernating up here. Just knowing
that people do care about them
makes them happier patients better
able to stand the psychic rigors of
therapy."
Said Mrs. Stilley, “It's worked
wonders for us, as well as for the
patients."
And what do the patients think of
the program?
“If you can get out and forget a
bit," said one, "it helps."
Body-Mapping To Improve
Diagnosis of Heart Defects
Earlier and inore accurate
diagnosis of congenital heart defects
is the object of a $38,000 clinical
research grant to Duke from the
National Foundation-March of
Dimes.
Receiving the grant is Dr. Madison
Spach, a professor of pediatrics and
chief of pediatric cardiology. Spach
and Dr. Roger C. Barr, a biomedical
engineer, have developed a
technique for recording what they
call "total body electr(x:ardiograms."
Through use of a small computer,
they can record and organize up to
150 separate measurements into a
body surface map of electrical
activity. Its design is to give
physicians an improved way to detect
congenital heart defects in infants
and help determine promptly
whether they will require surgery or
some other treatment.
I he Duke study is believed to be
unique in that it’s the only known
study that focuses on very young
infants, whose electrocardiograms
(EKGs) are usually quite different
from those of other children and
adults, Spach said. Also, he said,
infants' EKGs change rapidly with
age as their hearts mature, so what is
normal for one infant may signal
trouble for another at a different age.
The researchers will collect records
of which EKG changes accompany
normal heart development and
which ones indicate congenital
defects. They also will test a
simplified body-mapping technique
to see if 24 measurements instead of
the 150 now used will provide equally
reliable information.
Other pediatric cardiologists
working with Spach on the project
are Drs. Woodrow Benson, Samuel
Edwards and Gerald Serwer.