I am Dr Gauri Bhide, a practicing Oncologist in the Greater Boston area. I have been in practice for almost 20 years and feel very privileged to be able to be able to help people through the biggest challenge they will face. I grew up in Mumbai, India, went to medical school at one of the premier medical schools there, and moved to the US, where I trained in Internal Medicine, then Hematology/ Oncology. With my training and exposure to both Third World and American medicine, I feel I contribute a state of the art knowledge of modern medicine with strong doses of compassion and patience, clinical judgment and a feel for people’s life situations and resources.
I am starting this blog to be able to explain cancer management to patients and their families. Over the last two decades, I have been told frequently by patients and their families, that I have explained things to them in a way that they understand. This usually comes after they have been seen by many other very smart physicians in a very smart medical city. I have been in community practice and also affiliated with major academic referral centers and have helped recruit patients for clinical trials. I have to admit that I enjoy community oncology practice better. I am more directly connected to patients and their families, without layers of other people in between, as is developing in the major corporate hospital structures. As more medicine shifts to that model, I am starting this blog to reach out to communicate with patients and their families directly, and provide information that they may find helpful in their journey in their cancer treatment.
In addition, I am hoping to reach people in areas of the world where second opinions are not available, or are not the cultural norm. I have had many occasions to help friends’ families and my own relatives in different countries navigate through their cancer diagnoses and treatment decisions. I had a cousin in Australia who was not offered chemotherapy for Breast Cancer when she should have, and her father in India who was on the verge of going through a futile treatment for a bone marrow condition, with no possibility of response. She got the treatment that she should have, and he was saved from needless suffering, and expense.
I plan to address basics of cancer diagnosis and treatment, and go through the common cancers one by one. Along the way, we will talk about nutrition, exercise, complementary therapies, the mind-body connection, and any other relevant health maintainence topics.