Hi ,

Here is another edition of the Oncology Insights Newsletter to help you learn oncology, and other nuggets, as you progress in your oncology career.

Kelley

🧠 IPS (Insight, Pearl, Sundry)

Insight

Are you digitally dead? 🪦

Or maybe not dead, but invisible? 👻

If so, you’re limiting your impact and opportunities

In early 2017, a LinkedIn message changed the trajectory of my career

But that’s not when the story started. It started in 2014 when I first created a profile there and continued over the years as I figured out what my digital life would look like

In the beginning, I didn’t want to be ‘known’. It made me VERY uncomfortable - what if I said something wrong, or dumb, or easily misinterpreted?

So I didn’t post a lot and didn’t share my opinions (I’m not even sure I had many opinions back then)

For some reason, I was able to see the value of connecting with others and how that could open up doors in the future so I put in effort, despite not knowing where those doors would lead

I was active on the platform, kept an updated profile, and responded to messages, which is how that recruiter found me in 2017 and put me on a path I never knew existed 👇

💲 Helping a health system implement a multi-million dollar project

👭 Working with amazing fellow oncopharms that I still keep in touch with

🧳 Traveling so frequently that I had an apartment in a second home town

👩‍💻 Working at a small healthtech startup and learning how those companies are run

📱 Working in digital health and seeing how many moving pieces there are to stand up a digital service

👷‍♀️ Taking an idea, educating myself about how to start a business, and creating something that didn’t exist before to fill a gap in the marketplace

Maybe you are okay with being digitally dead or invisible, maybe you don’t want opportunities

Being digitally alive is about planting seeds for the future - you can’t be digitally visible only when you want something from others

You have to be prepared for happenstance because that’s where magic 🪄 happens

You can’t get hit by the luck truck if you aren’t standing in the road!

🌱 It’s like growing vegetables, you have to plant some seeds, nurture them (even when you have no idea if it will produce anything), and protect the seedlings that sprout until they are mature enough to provide you with something valuable

You don’t get to eat vegetables the day you plant the seeds and you don’t get to reap the opportunities the day you start a digital presence, you’re optimizing for the long tail conversion

Are you going to start living a digital life and plant seeds for your future?

Pearl

At the beginning of the book “In Sickness: A Memoir”, author Barrett Rollins describes how his wife (a well known cancer researcher) collapsed on their way to lunch in the Dana-Farber cafeteria - she had a massive pulmonary embolism (PE - see more about the crazy story in Sundry below)

It's a well-known fact that cancer increases the risk of developing a venous thromboembolism (VTE), but there are lots of nuances and idiosyncrasies to cancer-related VTE risk factors

First, let's look at solid tumors

Between pancreatic and breast cancer, which carries a higher risk of VTE?

The answer is…pancreatic. Research consistently shows that pancreatic cancer presents a heightened VTE risk, while breast cancer tends to have a relatively lower risk, although they definitely still happen.

Other solid tumors associated with elevated VTE risk include gastric, renal cell, lung, testicular, and gynecologic cancers (such as uterine and ovarian)

Did you know that distant metastases significantly elevate the risk of VTE? They do!

Patients with distant metastases have an increased odds ratio of ~20 for VTE risk versus those without distant metastases

What about hematologic malignancies? What is a common mechanism for developing a VTE in high-grade/aggressive lymphomas?

The answer is…venous compression. The enlarged lymph nodes compress the vasculature, which slows blood flow and leads to stasis and blood clot formation. This mechanism differs from that of VTE in other cancers, such as pancreatic, where increased tissue factor expression, occurring as the tumor establishes its own blood supply (angiogenesis), seems to play a more prominent role.

There are all kinds of interesting tidbits of information about VTEs, a very common complication of cancer, and pharmacists can help treat and prevent them. Our teams need our help because it’s a challenge to treat patients that are likely getting myelosuppressive therapy since they will often be thrombocytopenic, putting them at increased risk of bleeding on top of the VTE risk.

Sundry

We read In Sickness: A Memoir for a book club in the ELO Collaborative. It was pretty shocking.

The story is about a married couple (of 30 years), both oncologists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (both in research roles), and what happened when Jane’s metastatic cancer diagnosis became known when she had a massive PE at work.

That sounds pretty normal, even oncologists can get cancer. The shocking part was that she’d had it for years without telling anyone, and was treating herself 😳

There are so many mind blowing things about this woman’s life (like the fact that she never saw any doctors, for anything) and her marriage

It reminded me of patients I saw in clinic that knew something was wrong but never saw a doctor about it; by the time they showed up (usually in the ER for a VTE or pain crisis) there was very little we could offer

If you’ve read this book, hit reply and let me know your thoughts. I’m still wrapping my head around all of it 😅

💡 Have a topic you want to see discussed in the newsletter? Hit reply and share it! 💡

When you're ready, here are ways to get help

Learn oncology

The Enjoy Learning Oncology (ELO) program was created for pharmacists working in oncology and trying to learn on the job. It helps you develop your baseline knowledge of the important diseases and concepts that will help you be successful in any type of oncology role. 

✔️ The ELO Certificate tier is the closest you'll get to a residency experience without taking a $50,000+ pay cut. It pairs you with an experienced oncology pharmacist mentor to help you smash your professional goals and reach that next level you've been striving for. It also comes with accountability calls with me and everything in the ELO Collaborative. Book a call to see if this is the right fit for you.

✔️ The ELO Collaborative is the signature oncology pharmacy membership community. It combines curated content in 24 weekly lessons with access to expert oncology pharmacists to walk through case studies and answer questions, both on monthly live calls and asynchronously in the community, a question bank, cases, professional development workshops, and more!

✔️ The ELO Blueprint is the self-led tier of ELO to help you deepen your oncology knowledge. It includes the 24 weekly lessons of curated content so you learn where all the great resources are, in addition to the question bank and cases. 

Other Resources

✔️ Practice questions are a great way to study for the BCOP exam and assess your oncology knowledge. Purchase access to the question bank for as little as $297. All 350+ questions are created and reviewed by expert oncology pharmacists in each specialty area and have answer explanations. Plus you have the opportunity to add on practice cases!

Individual Cancer Courses

Breast cancer and lung cancer are live! Enroll for only $199 each.