Find out what's happening at The Harold Leever Regional Cancer Center, including doctor and staff profiles, new features and services, community events, and support groups for patients and families. For additional information and resources, we encourage you to sign up for our AWARE newsletter.
As you know, COVID-19 has impacted many aspects of our lives — from increased hand washing and mask wearing to restrictions on gatherings with friends and family. There have been many changes at the Leever Center too. We have had to cancel all in-person support groups and events, follow guidelines for screening and safety, and change our cleaning and sanitizing protocols for everyone’s safety. One important aspect of patient care that has continued without interruption is our multidisciplinary conferences.
If you have visited the Leever Cancer Center in the last year, you’ve met our screening team, which greets all visitors and verifies that they are safe to enter the facility.
“Look Good, Feel Better offers women the opportunity to effectively mitigate some of the side effects — both physical and emotional — that can make cancer treatment especially difficult,” says Leever Operations Director Deborah Parkinson. “We’re proud to offer the program at no cost to our patients, who are always grateful for its profound impact on their lives.”
Routine screenings are among the most important tools available to physicians and patients working to treat and prevent cancer.
“Screening can help doctors find and treat many forms of cancer early, before patients begin to experience symptoms,” explains Leever Radiation Oncologist Dr. Joseph Ravalese III. “Early detection is important because almost all cancers respond to treatment better in the earliest stages of the disease, when they have not spread to other parts of the body.”
They say that knowledge is power — it equips us to predict, understand, prevent, and solve problems. Sourcing healthcare knowledge is critically important, especially when it comes to cancer, where it must be broad in scope, precise in detail, and backed by meticulous data. In Waterbury, that data is managed by highly trained cancer registrars working at the city’s two hospitals: Amy Baldwin-Stephens at Saint Mary’s Hospital and Sara Mercado at Waterbury Hospital.
A cancer diagnosis brings significant challenges—not just physical, but mental and emotional as well.
For women, dealing with the physical trials associated with cancer and cancer treatment can be exacerbated by appearance-related side effects, including hair loss, changes in skin tone, and dramatic swings in body weight. Far from being trivial, those appearance-related issues can be devastating to a woman’s self-esteem, body image, social functioning, and sense of self.
When you're dealing with cancer treatment, it's easy to let stress take over. To help patients cope with that stress, and as part of the Leever Cancer Center's dedication to providing comprehensive cancer support services to our patients and their families, we offer the "Building Your Self-Care Toolbox” program, a series of no-cost workshops for patients and caregivers.
