As the broker-manager of Denver, Colorado-based Kentwood Real Estate - Cherry Creek Office, Gretchen Rosenberg oversees a residential real estate firm ranked among the top 100 brokerages in the nation by the National Association of Realtors. Outside of her work with Kentwood, Gretchen Rosenberg has witnessed the deleterious effects of cancer on close family members and friends, motivating her to support the research initiatives of the American Cancer Society.
The American Cancer Society is currently investigating ways improve the ability of patients to manage the side effects of cancer treatment and enhance their quality of life. While the spectrum of cancer treatments induces a broad array of side effects, among them nausea, diarrhea, and low blood counts, one of the most commonly experienced is persistent fatigue. It is estimated that 70 percent to 100 percent of patients treated for cancer endure fatigue, yet the reasons for this and methods for combating it are not yet well understood.
The American Cancer Society strives to address this gap in knowledge by funding researchers like John Merriman, MS, who is analyzing attentional fatigue in patients with breast cancer. Attentional fatigue degrades the ability of a person to maintain mental focus for an extended period of time, which, in patients with breast cancer, could be related to the alteration of genes involved in inflammation. Establishing this correlation could allow drug developers to devise cancer medications with new target sites that would minimize the symptoms of attentional fatigue and give doctors a scientific basis upon which to frame their advice to patients susceptible to this symptom.
Other cancer treatment side effects may be more inevitable and could best be handled through effective coping techniques. Through a grant from the American Cancer Society, social worker Daniela Wittmann will conduct interviews with men afflicted with the sexual dysfunction that commonly follows prostate cancer surgery. Based on the information gleaned from discussions with these men and their partners about the sexual coping mechanisms they utilize, a set of standard sexual-restoration strategies could be developed for couples dealing with a postsurgery reduction in intimacy.
#Gretchen Rosenberg, American Cancer Society, side effects, attentional fatigue
The American Cancer Society is currently investigating ways improve the ability of patients to manage the side effects of cancer treatment and enhance their quality of life. While the spectrum of cancer treatments induces a broad array of side effects, among them nausea, diarrhea, and low blood counts, one of the most commonly experienced is persistent fatigue. It is estimated that 70 percent to 100 percent of patients treated for cancer endure fatigue, yet the reasons for this and methods for combating it are not yet well understood.
The American Cancer Society strives to address this gap in knowledge by funding researchers like John Merriman, MS, who is analyzing attentional fatigue in patients with breast cancer. Attentional fatigue degrades the ability of a person to maintain mental focus for an extended period of time, which, in patients with breast cancer, could be related to the alteration of genes involved in inflammation. Establishing this correlation could allow drug developers to devise cancer medications with new target sites that would minimize the symptoms of attentional fatigue and give doctors a scientific basis upon which to frame their advice to patients susceptible to this symptom.
Other cancer treatment side effects may be more inevitable and could best be handled through effective coping techniques. Through a grant from the American Cancer Society, social worker Daniela Wittmann will conduct interviews with men afflicted with the sexual dysfunction that commonly follows prostate cancer surgery. Based on the information gleaned from discussions with these men and their partners about the sexual coping mechanisms they utilize, a set of standard sexual-restoration strategies could be developed for couples dealing with a postsurgery reduction in intimacy.
#Gretchen Rosenberg, American Cancer Society, side effects, attentional fatigue