Welcome

Hello!

Welcome to this blog.
I am a practicing surgical oncologist and I work with patients who have gastrointestinal and abdominal cancers.

One of my greatest joys in medicine is the conversations I get to have with patients and families who have been newly diagnosed with cancer. Educating patients about their new diagnosis, discussing various treatment options, and then arriving at a joint decision on the best treatment course is my passion and calling.

From a cancer biology standpoint, I am deeply interested in liver, pancreas and metastatic cancers. We are in the middle of a revolution in targeted therapy and immunotherapy, and this is changing nearly everything we know about life with cancer.

In my clinical practice, I use a lot of visual aids and analogies to demystify the anatomy, physiology and biology of cancers. These efforts are rooted in my conviction that taking the mystery out of medicine will allow physicians and their patients to be more equal partners in their care, and provide patients with increased ownership and command of their disease.

For a person with cancer, I believe that success in cancer care is not based on ‘beating a cancer’, and sometimes is not even based on being ‘cured’. Rather, I see success when that person asserts their life values, retains the gift of making decisions, and truly lives with dignity till the end of their life.

In these series of blog posts, I hope to provide you with some useful information about certain gastrointestinal and liver/pancreas cancers. I also hope to dive into other challenging topics that many people and many doctors are uncomfortable discussing, such as end of life decision making and when to say ‘enough’.

I would love feedback and any suggestions on topics you want to hear about, and I look forward to this journey together.

Yours truly,

Rajesh Ramanathan MD