Why is ocular oncology an unusual subspecialty in medicine? It is unusual because standards of care vary between institutions and between ophthalmologists who practice ocular oncology. At one center, enucleation (removal of the eye) may be recommended, at another center, brachytherapy plaque may be recommended. One doctor may recommend continued observation because the tumor is located in the macula (the area of the retina responsible for central vision), another doctor may recommend enucleation for macula-involving melanomas because the central vision may be damaged. This is just the tip of the clinical variability iceberg.

Furthermore, there are many ocular oncologists who are 5 years or less into their clinical practices. Given how rare ocular tumors are, one doctor's experience may be much less than a colleague who has been practicing longer. What can be done to help all patients benefit, not just those who find themselves in the care of someone more experienced?

Introducing OMG - Oncology Mentoring Group. This monthly informal Zoom meeting will launch next week. I look forward to hosting this consortium to which all ocular oncologists regardless of experience have been invited. The more senior participants will also have a forum to share their collective wisdom. The mission of OMG is to accelerate the learing curve in ocular oncology so that one doesn't have to wait until they are 10 or more years in practice to feel comfortable managing complex situations. Ultimately, I hope this endeavor will elevate patient care so that ocular melanoma patients can benefit from a more connected community of physicians.

For Tara McCannel's resources (including webinar links and link to my book!), visit my website: https://seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma

Welcome to Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma, a guide to understanding everything there is to know about your experience with this rare cancer. Learn through the lens of my knowledge and clinical experience as a physician expert and passionate patient advocate. The more you know about ocular melanoma, the better you will do, and the better you will live. Let's go!

The content shared on the Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information provided must not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As a listener, you are responsible for your own health-related decisions and must consider consulting with a healthcare professional for personalized medical advice.

Tara McCannel MD PhD is a an ocular oncologist, vitreoretinal surgeon and co-founder of Seyhart Wellness. She is also the host of the Mind Body MD podcast where she shares her passion for holistic health and wellness.

Pause for a moment and ask yourself - What have I learned lately from my life? From this ocular melanoma journey and other important events in my life? We all have a tendency to go through the motions based on our familiar past routines, whether they are good for us or whether they may not serve us well. Familiarity keeps us feeling safe. Rather than push them away and feel disappointment, let's instead embrace our challenges and allow big events in life to shake us up, re-assess and re-evaluate all that we do, all that we want to do.

A patient I treated who is 2 years out from his ocular melanoma diagnosis shared with me that getting diagnosed with eye cancer was one of the best things that has happened to his life. He realized that he had so much to be grateful for that he did not appreciate before. He decided to let go of people in his life that were not supportive and caring. He left his old job to pursue a career that he is truly passionate about. He said that he would never wish that ocular melanoma did not happen to him, he is thankful for life's wake-up call. Listen to hear more about embracing your challenges.

For Tara McCannel's resources (including webinar links and link to my book!), visit my website: https://seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma

Welcome to Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma, a guide to understanding everything there is to know about your experience with this rare cancer. Learn through the lens of my knowledge and clinical experience as a physician expert and passionate patient advocate. The more you know about ocular melanoma, the better you will do, and the better you will live. Let's go!

The content shared on the Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information provided must not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As a listener, you are responsible for your own health-related decisions and must consider consulting with a healthcare professional for personalized medical advice.

Tara McCannel MD PhD is a an ocular oncologist, vitreoretinal surgeon and co-founder of Seyhart Wellness. She is also the host of the Mind Body MD podcast where she shares her passion for holistic health and wellness.

This episode was inspired by my new-found knowledge of the work of legendary Harvard health psychologist Ellen J. Langer, PhD. Dr. Langer defines "mindfulness" as the simple act of noticing new things. Unfortunately, most of us may live our lives "mindlessly", which is the opposite - living life without being open to noticing the subtle variations in life, because we believe we know what is going on. However, if we are open to not knowing everything, we may start paying attention to the unknown and subtle variations and learn things that we didn't even realize or appreciate before.

In Medicine, we are dealing with a constantly changing entity, our human life. Although we know some things, we do not understand everything. In clinical situations, we must actively pay attention to new things and not rigidly follow criteria or protocols. For example, if we make the diagnosis of ocular melanoma from a list of criteria, we will both over-treat those with benign conditions and under-treat those who actually have ocular melanoma. If we give every patient Avastin injections after radiation treatment whether they have signs and symptoms of radiation retinopathy or not, we are absolutely over-treating people who may never get radiation retinopathy in the first place.

Take-home points: Be thoughtful, be open to not knowing, accept that there is always something to learn, becasue no one knows everything. As a patient, learn to notice if you think your care is mindless or mindful and speak up!

For Tara McCannel's resources (including webinar links and link to my book!), visit my website: https://seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma

Welcome to Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma, a guide to understanding everything there is to know about your experience with this rare cancer. Learn through the lens of my knowledge and clinical experience as a physician expert and passionate patient advocate. The more you know about ocular melanoma, the better you will do, and the better you will live. Let's go!

The content shared on the Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information provided must not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As a listener, you are responsible for your own health-related decisions and must consider consulting with a healthcare professional for personalized medical advice.

Tara McCannel MD PhD is a an ocular oncologist, vitreoretinal surgeon and co-founder of Seyhart Wellness. She is also the host of the Mind Body MD podcast where she shares her passion for holistic health and wellness.

Whether you have a benign lesion that is being monitored, whether you are seeing an ocular oncologist for the first time to have something suspicious evaluated, or if you are being monitored for a treated ocular melanoma, imaging tests are a key part of your care. Listen on to learn about how we use ultrasonography, the different types of color photography, how fluorescein angiography works and how it is used, and the OCT (optical coherence tomography) test. It is important to understand that none of these tests can make the diagnosis of ocular melanoma, or tell the complete picture of what is going in with your vision without the physical examination and in-person assessment of your ocular oncologist. It is the expertise of your doctor together with the supportive tests that the imaging studies provide that allow the best decisions to be made in your eye health.

For Tara McCannel's resources (including webinar links and link to my book!), visit my website: https://seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma

Welcome to Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma, a guide to understanding everything there is to know about your experience with this rare cancer. Learn through the lens of my knowledge and clinical experience as a physician expert and passionate patient advocate. The more you know about ocular melanoma, the better you will do, and the better you will live. Let's go!

The content shared on the Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information provided must not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As a listener, you are responsible for your own health-related decisions and must consider consulting with a healthcare professional for personalized medical advice.

Tara McCannel MD PhD is a an ocular oncologist, vitreoretinal surgeon and co-founder of Seyhart Wellness. She is also the host of the Mind Body MD podcast where she shares her passion for holistic health and wellness.

This Sunday, Feburary 23,2025 at 10AM PST I will be hosting my next live webinar on the topic, "The Role of Mindset in Cancer Survival: Science of a Healing Attitude". I have been completely amazed at all of the knowledge that we already have in this field, where what we think can change our health. In traditional healthcare settings, we focus only on what is happening in our physical body, the organ that is affected or the organ that can be affected. Most of us are completely oblivious to the undeniably powerful effect that our thoughts, our mindsets and our attitudes (for example, positive or negative) may have on our physiology. Join me on Sunday to hear about some of the pioneers in the field of health psychology, the data that is relevant to you and what you can do to start changing your own mindset.

If you haven't already registered, go to my resource page to register for this Sunday! The webinar will be recorded if you can't make the date.

For Tara McCannel's resources (including webinar links and link to my book!), visit my website: https://seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma

Welcome to Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma, a guide to understanding everything there is to know about your experience with this rare cancer. Learn through the lens of my knowledge and clinical experience as a physician expert and passionate patient advocate. The more you know about ocular melanoma, the better you will do, and the better you will live. Let's go!

The content shared on the Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information provided must not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As a listener, you are responsible for your own health-related decisions and must consider consulting with a healthcare professional for personalized medical advice.

Tara McCannel MD PhD is a an ocular oncologist, vitreoretinal surgeon and co-founder of Seyhart Wellness. She is also the host of the Mind Body MD podcast where she shares her passion for holistic health and wellness.

When the ocular melanoma is discovered and the tumor is too large for eye-saving treatment, the ocular oncologist will recommend enucleation. Enucleation is surgery where the whole eyeball is removed to control the growth of the tumor. After enucleation, many patients may no longer see their ocular oncologist, because there is nothing tumor-related to be monitoring in the eye. The individual may see a general ophthalmologist or an optometrist for continued eye care. However, these professionals may know very little about ocular melanoma. We often find that people who are treated with enucleation may end up discontinuing screening with their medical oncologist for liver scans, because they are not reminded by anyone in the picture who is an expert in ocular melanoma. Yet, these are the people who must be the most engaged with their follow-up, screening, and total health. The larger the ocular melanoma when it is discovered, the greater the risk that the cancer may metastasize.

In order to stay engaged, remain preventive and to be pro-active, people who have had an enucleation must continue to do all or most of the following when possible: 1) routinely see the ocular oncologist who made the diagnosis; 2) continue to see the medical oncologist for every 6 months abdominal scans; 3) stay engaged with patient support organizations such as A Cure In Sight, CureOM, Ocular Melanoma Foundation; and 4) continue actively learning all there is to know about the latest in ocular melanoma and cancer research through high-quality and trusted resources.

For Tara McCannel's resources (including webinar links and link to my book!), visit my website: https://seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma

Welcome to Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma, a guide to understanding everything there is to know about your experience with this rare cancer. Learn through the lens of my knowledge and clinical experience as a physician expert and passionate patient advocate. The more you know about ocular melanoma, the better you will do, and the better you will live. Let's go!

The content shared on the Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information provided must not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As a listener, you are responsible for your own health-related decisions and must consider consulting with a healthcare professional for personalized medical advice.

Tara McCannel MD PhD is a an ocular oncologist, vitreoretinal surgeon and co-founder of Seyhart Wellness. She is also the host of the Mind Body MD podcast where she shares her passion for holistic health and wellness.

Have you ever left your doctor's appointment feeling rushed and somewhat confused regarding your healthcare options? Do you find that it's hard to get information from your doctor? Consider every doctor's appointment as not only an opportunity to know how you're doing, but also as a chance to learn more about your condition, to have questions answered and to better understand what you can be doing to improve your health. So plan in advance - write down anything you have been experiencing, updates about other areas of your health, and questions that you have that have come up between visits. Bring this physical piece of paper to the visit and have it visible on your lap. Also consider bringing others with you to the appoitnment. Having more people speak up and advocate for you will allow you to get the most out of your doctor visit.

For Tara McCannel's resources (including webinar links and link to my book!), visit my website: https://seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma

Welcome to Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma, a guide to understanding everything there is to know about your experience with this rare cancer. Learn through the lens of my knowledge and clinical experience as a physician expert and passionate patient advocate. The more you know about ocular melanoma, the better you will do, and the better you will live. Let's go!

The content shared on the Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information provided must not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As a listener, you are responsible for your own health-related decisions and must consider consulting with a healthcare professional for personalized medical advice.

Tara McCannel MD PhD is a an ocular oncologist, vitreoretinal surgeon and co-founder of Seyhart Wellness. She is also the host of the Mind Body MD podcast where she shares her passion for holistic health and wellness.

Inflammatory pain after brachytherapy is fairly common. The dying tumor causes the nearby tissues of the eye, eye-socket (orbit) and sometimes the adjacent temple and forehead to also be achey. The larger the tumor, usually the more the inflammation as the body turns what's left of the dead tumor into a scar. Sometimes the inflammation may be "clinically detectable", meaning that the ophthalmolgist can see anterior chamber cells (at the slit-lamp microscope) and leaking vessels on fluorescein angiography (the dye test). But most of the time the examination and testing will not indicate the inflammation, but the patient's verbal description of their symptoms will. Here are typical inflammatory symptoms: aching of the eye, aching of the area around the eye that gets worse as the day wears on. These symptoms will improve with ibuprofen or topical prednisolone acetate 1% eye drops. Listen to learn more about how inflammatory eye pain can be treated by your ocular oncologist or retina specialist.

For Tara McCannel's resources (including webinar links and link to my patient handbook!), visit my website: https://seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma

Welcome to Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma, a guide to understanding everything there is to know about your experience with this rare cancer. Learn through the lens of my knowledge and clinical experience as a physician expert and passionate patient advocate. The more you know about ocular melanoma, the better you will do, and the better you will live. Let's go!

The content shared on the Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information provided must not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As a listener, you are responsible for your own health-related decisions and must consider consulting with a healthcare professional for personalized medical advice.

Tara McCannel MD PhD is a an ocular oncologist, vitreoretinal surgeon and co-founder of Seyhart Wellness. She is also the host of the Mind Body MD podcast where she shares her passion for holistic health and wellness.

One of the most useful imaging tests invented in the history of ophthalmology is Optical Coherence Tomography, or OCT. The OCT is used to image the macula, the part of the retina that provides our central sight. The image provided by OCT is like a pathology slide - we can see each of the layers of the retina and what is going on beyond our traditional physical examination where we use biomicroscopy with the indirect head-lamp or slit lamp to see the retina. It is now so much easier to detect diseases which may affect our macula early - age related macular degeneration, macular pucker, macular hole, macular edema, inherited diseases, drug toxicities, etc.

When radiation retinopathy treatment is initiated with anti-VEGF drug injections, the OCT is often used to help evaluate the effectiveness of treatment. However, it is key to also discuss the subjective benefit of the shots with the patient to truly learn how beneficial the injections may be. Why? Because the OCT only tests the macula, which makes up only about 15% of the entire retina. In radiation retinopathy, unlike other macular disease, the vessels of the entire retina can be damaged. Hence, the injections can also improve one's overall quality of vision, because of how it helps boost the function of retinal vessels responsible for peripheral vision, in addition to central vision.

Listen to learn more about how I start the treatment of radiation retinopathy, and the importance of learning the subjective visual effects for the patient to decide how to manage injections.

For Tara McCannel's resources (including webinar links and link to my book!), visit my website: https://seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma

Welcome to Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma, a guide to understanding everything there is to know about your experience with this rare cancer. Learn through the lens of my knowledge and clinical experience as a physician expert and passionate patient advocate. The more you know about ocular melanoma, the better you will do, and the better you will live. Let's go!

The content shared on the Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information provided must not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As a listener, you are responsible for your own health-related decisions and must consider consulting with a healthcare professional for personalized medical advice.

Tara McCannel MD PhD is a an ocular oncologist, vitreoretinal surgeon and co-founder of Seyhart Wellness. She is also the host of the Mind Body MD podcast where she shares her passion for holistic health and wellness.

Why is the Doctor-Patient relationship so important? Because the positive-mindset of a care-provider will result in better health outcomes for the patient. When your doctor focuses on the things that are going well, and believes there is hope for your situation, you too will be influenced by this positivity. A positive mindset is characterized by optimism, hopefulness and the willingness to adopt constructive and practical approaches to the challenges we face. The notion that our thoughts shape our outcomes is also true with health outcomes. Research has shown that people with this positive approach have more robust immune responses - higher levels of immunoglogulins and increased activity of natural killer cells that are important in combating cancer (Antoni et al, Nature Reviews in Cancer, 2006). People with a negative approach have a physiological state similar to chronic stress, with continuous cortisol secretion which suppresses our immune function.

Besides strengthening immune function, a positive mindset also helps enable people to take more actions that support good health - exercise, eating well, giving back to the community.

We can't change our doctors, but we can change our own approach to our healthcare team. The following can help engage your provider and perhaps set the tone for a more positive relationship: 1) Write down your questions and ask for explanations; 2) Express how you are feeling about some aspect of your progress; 3) Focus on gratitude - there is always something to appreciate about your healthcare experience. Finally, know that sometimes the best action is getting a new healthcare provider.

For Tara McCannel's resources (including webinar links and link to the book), visit my website: https://seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma

Welcome to Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma, a guide to understanding everything there is to know about your experience with this rare cancer. Learn through the lens of my knowledge and clinical experience as a physician expert and passionate patient advocate. The more you know about ocular melanoma, the better you will do, and the better you will live. Let's go!

The content shared on the Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information provided must not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As a listener, you are responsible for your own health-related decisions and must consider consulting with a healthcare professional for personalized medical advice.

Tara McCannel MD PhD is a an ocular oncologist, vitreoretinal surgeon and co-founder of Seyhart Wellness. She is also the host of the Mind Body MD podcast where she shares her passion for holistic health and wellness.