Posts by Janet L. Abrahm, M.D.

This month, I encountered a woman with metastatic breast cancer whose pain presented a challenge to her oncology team. The key to helping her, as is often the case, was to ask ourselves, “Where is the lesion causing the intractable pain?”  The woman was admitted for bilateral hip pain and was receiving radiation to her…

For this month’s newsletter, I interviewed Dr. James Tulsky about serious illness conversations. Dr. Tulsky is an internationally recognized leader in clinician–patient communication and supportive oncology. He is the Poorvu Jaffe Chair of the Department of Supportive Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Chief of the Division of Palliative Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.…

With this newsletter moving to Substack, it felt like the right moment to return to Pain & Symptom Management. Much of my work begins when “the usual” approaches fall short, where standard strategies don’t bring the relief patients need. Let’s take a closer look at the role of methadone in these complex cases. Nowadays, I’m…

Early in my career, an injury from a fall on black ice led to years of intermittent, often debilitating pain—and it quietly shaped how I came to see my patients. Living with pain taught me how completely it can disrupt plans, erode a sense of agency, and make it nearly impossible to imagine a future,…

As a hypnosis practitioner, I have experienced the unexpected capacity of my patient’s brains to modify pain, nausea, anxiety, and other causes of their distress. When I heard how psychedelic assisted therapy could relieve or even eliminate my patients’ existential distress, I needed to learn more. I attended a two-day course and interviewed one of the…

The concept of mind over matter has been close to my heart since the earliest days of my training in hematology and oncology in the 1980s. My patients were suffering pain, cancer or treatment-induced nausea and vomiting, and dyspnea. Many felt they could no longer endure the symptoms, and I needed something besides the short-acting…

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, so this month’s newsletter will offer some insights, updates, and resources that I hope will be useful as you care for your patients with breast cancer.  If I have missed anything you use, please feel free to let me know. Hot flashesAt ASCO 2025, results of the OASIS-4 trial…

In light of Sexual Health Awareness Month, I spoke with Dr. Sharon Bober about why sexual health belongs in conversations about cancer care. As oncology clinicians, we’re accustomed to talking about pain, fatigue, and treatment side effects—but how often do we talk with our patients about sexual health even though patients tell us it’s central…

June is Pride month. In recognition, I’m sharing two sets of videos from the website janetabrahm.com: “Working with LGBTQ+ patients” with Dr. Alexis Drutchas, and“Working with transgender patients” with Dallas Ducar, NP, FAAN. I hope you find these interviews to be as helpful and insightful as I did. They provide strategies with which we can work…

Supportive Care, Palliative Care, Hospice Care – patients and clinicians (often) consider them one and the same and want to avoid thinking about them. That is because for many of us, these terms connote failure—not just failure of cancer treatment but also personal failure. Patients, family members, and clinicians alike feel that when they consult…