live from San Antonie SABCS!

[chrisy]

This morning the symposium officially began, and the Her2support.org table was crowded with people stopping by to learn about our website.
Paty and Veronica, from our Hispanic sister site "Latinos con Cancer de Seno" are particularly busy spreading the word to doctors from all over the world, and particularly Mexico and South America. Great job!

We've already met doctors from all over the world, researchers working on projects or early clinical trials for Her2+ patients, and adovcay groups inviting us to participate in various projects.

Yesterday, before the meeting, there were a series of educational sessions. Severaly of us attended one on Symptom Management which included some very interesting research on Lymphedema (which was being posted to JCO that day) and exercise. These studies looked at the risk/benefit of having women with or at high risk of developing lympedema go through strength training - turning the old paradigm of "don't use that arm" on its head.

Note, this was controlled physical therapy, not just go out and start pumping iron - but this approach reduced lympedema and prevented loss of upper body strength.

the analogy was, heart patients are now encouraged to slowly build strength but not to go out and start shoveling snow. Interesting stuff.

More to come!