Right turn: If you had leukemia or lymphoma, what would you want to know?

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Julia Pon is a MD/PhD student at the University of British Columbia with an interest in blood cancer. Like many before her, she noticed that the kind of information that is shared with cancer patients is different than what medical students are taught about the disease: one set of information focuses on symptoms and treatments, while the other set describes what the disease is and how it develops. She wondered whether patients might benefit from knowing more about what’s going on their bodies and posed the question:  “If you had leukemia or lymphoma, what would you want to know?”

It’s no small question. But the amazing thing is, Julia set out to answer it — not with a pamphlet or presentation — but with video. Six of them. If you’ve ever set out to make a video, you’ll know it can be a rather complicated (and often expensive) and time-consuming process. Julia’s drawn her stylistic inspiration from other popular science videos, which lend themselves very well to the topic. We’re including two of them here (on stem cells, of course) but we encourage you to view all of the videos, share them and give your feedback.

Our regular feature, Right Turn, showcases the “lighter” side of stem cells and regenerative medicine. Every Friday, we will bring you cartoons, photos, videos and other content that may be just as thought provoking as the written submissions that you are used to finding here, but they definitely won’t be blogs.

As always, we welcome your feedback and we also welcome suitable submissions. Be creative! Use the right (!) side of your brain. Make us laugh! Let’s see if we can make this new direction a positive one for all of us. Send your submission to info(at)ccrm.ca.

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Lisa Willemse

Lisa is a science communicator with 15+ years' experience in the fields of regenerative medicine, child development and technology. She launched this blog (first as the Stem Cell Network Blog) in 2009, and served as co-editor until April 2015. She is currently the Director, Communications & Public Affairs for the Stem Cell Network, and has contributed to Motherboard, Science Borealis and the Genome Alberta and Canadian Blood Services blogs. Follow her on Twitter and Medium @WillemseLA.

Latest posts by Lisa Willemse (see all)

• Toronto team tackling unmet need in cell manufacturing using synthetic biology - January 9, 2020
• Medicine by Design-funded researchers devise new strategy to improve the safety of cell therapies - February 22, 2019
• Right Turn: These three videos show why we should be impressed by our young stem cell researchers - November 18, 2016