Clinical Corner
Trials + Updates
Clinical Corner
Physician Moms: Supporting Ourselves and Each Other
By Julia Close, M.D.
Originally published in ASCO Connection.
“When is the best time to have children?”
The question, arising from an eager medical student at a forum where I was a panelist on work-life balance, was not unexpected.
As men and women are now equally represented in medical schools, the physician mom is no longer rare. Many of us carry this title. None of us is perfect at balancing the demands of motherhood and medicine.
I asked the same question while I was in medical school. I understand the dilemma. Most of us in medicine are planners. From the age of 8, I planned to be a doctor. I had a vision of myself, smartly dressed, in a lab coat, saying lots of smart medical things, saving lives, working long hours. I also planned to be a mom, smartly dressed, in mom jeans (I planned this before Lululemon existed), saying lots of smart maternal things, making cookies from scratch, picking kids up from school. I never imagined the two pathways intersecting.
The reality of being a mom and a physician contrasts to the description above, as depicted in the image to the right. This is me, when my boys were 0.5, 3, and 4 years old. My university employer offers onsite daycare (kudos to the University of Florida). As faculty at the time my third child was born, home-based help was financially an option. Our older two were already in daycare, and the desperate run to get there before closing (sometimes a full-on sprint) helped to ensure that at least my husband or I, and hopefully the children, arrived home at a “reasonable” hour. We chose to keep all three at the same center. I managed to wrangle the menagerie into a sit-and-stand stroller for the pickup and drop-off ritual.
Occasionally, one of the ambulatory boys would not want to ride. My usual approach, after an attempt at negotiation, was to place the rebelling child on my shoulder, often kicking and screaming, and proceed as scheduled. This was usually when I passed stately professors who had taught me in medical school, who either failed to recognize me or stared at a suddenly important mole on their left hand, thereby avoiding the train wreck that was passing them on the crosswalk.
To read the entire article in ASCO Connection, click here.
Clinical Trial Highlight: Refractory Cancers
This issue of the UFHCC Connection highlights clinical trials currently recruiting patients with refractory malignancies.
Questions about how to send a patient? Please contact the Clinical Trials Office at cancer-center@ufl.edu or 352.273.8675
This Phase 2 trial is available for patients with relapse/refractory Multiple Myeloma who have received 1-4 lines of therapy. Patients must have been exposed to an IMID and whose disease is not Bortezomib-refractory.
This is an open-label Phase I study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of escalating oral doses of NLG802, an investigational agent intended to inhibit the indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) enzyme and help the human immune system attack solid tumor cells more effectively.
This Phase 1/2 trial is available for most patients with advanced solid tumors refractory to standard therapies. It tests the combination of dual DNA-repair/replication inhibitors, even if the cancer type is not typically sensitive to irinotecan.