Editor’s Note
	Love and courage

Every nurse and doctor who has traveled the rocky road of caring for oncology patients knows that for all the physical, emotional and spiritual suffering we encounter, every now and then, a true miracle crosses our paths.

When I interviewed Ms Ann Culkin, Ms Leslie Tyson and Dr Mark Kris for this issue, I asked them if there was a patient in their practice who would be informative to interview for our audience. Each interviewee replied with the same answer: Barbara Parisi. We invited Ms Parisi and her husband Paul Chrystal — who are publicly outspoken advocates for lung cancer patients — to be our guests in Miami and to meet our education team. Needless to say, it was a highly informative afternoon.

Barbara and Paul are a very happily married couple whose lives suddenly crashed five years ago in a surgical recovery room at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Facing what appeared to be an incurable cancer with a median life expectancy of less than a year, this inspirational duo could have never imagined that five years later, Barbara would be without evidence of cancer and receiving a high-tech, nontoxic oral therapy (gefitinib) that only became commercially available in 2003.

I have always found it fascinating to ask people facing life-threatening illnesses how they are able to reach inside themselves and find the strength to move on. Over the years, the answers have taught me more than any medical journal or conference ever could. However, meeting Barbara Parisi truly took this phenomenon to a new level. Sitting across from this determined, seemingly healthy woman and her husband, waves of energy and a deep connection between these two individuals were palpable in the air. It was clear that much more than chemotherapy, surgery and gefitinib were involved in this woman's remarkable recovery.

The same feeling permeated the room when I interviewed Ms Parisi's treating oncology team. Ann Culkin, a proud Irish woman, met with me on St Patrick's Day — and to my astonishment, described a talk she had given the night before to 635 members of the Irish Women's Society of Scranton, Pennsylvania (her hometown). One does not usually associate the topic of lung cancer with a St Patrick's Day celebration, but Ms Culkin loves her work, loves her patients and loves talking about both.

Similarly, when I commented to nurse practitioner Leslie Tyson that she seemed to experience a lot of professional gratification, her face lit up with the warmest smile you could imagine. "I love my job," she said, and it takes about 10 seconds to also realize that Ms Tyson is very, very good at what she does.

Ms Culkin describes Dr Kris as "old school" with obvious respect and affection. Mark is a fountain of cancer knowledge, but he is also extremely compassionate and sits on his patients' beds, holds their hands and looks them in the eyes when he brings bad news.

Just weeks after interviewing Ms Parisi, an important article was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on the treatment she is receiving. Every television network and major news outlet covered what was hailed as a major breakthrough in cancer therapy the discovery of an abnormal gene that predicts for response to gefinitib present in some patients with lung cancer.

I imagine we will have cancer genetics pretty much figured out well before we ever understand the "mechanism of action" for human caring. However, the love that exists between parent and child, husband and wife, doctor, nurse and patient, and our ability to find a seemingly endless fountain of courage, while not fully understood, will always play a critical role in the recovery from any serious disease.

— Neil Love, MD
NLove@ResearchToPractice.net