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Doctors are famous for having illegible handwriting, but Dr. Richard Frank has earned kudos for his writing ... of the published kind. Frank, director of cancer research at the Whittingham Cancer Center at Norwalk Hospital, received the American Medical Writers Association's "Medical Book Award" for his book "Fighting Cancer With Knowledge & Hope." In addition, Frank is a regular contributor to Cure magazine and blogs about cancer on WebMD as well as his own website, RichardFrankMD.com.
"I always loved to write," says Frank, who joined Norwalk Hospital 10 years ago after eight years at Memorial Sloan- Kettering Medical Center in New York City. "And I grew up in an empathetic familyI've always been attuned to people's emotions."
And there are emotions aplenty in Frank's chosen field of oncology. "We have a lot of victories, but a lot of losses too, unfortunately," he says. Giving patients about to embark on the roller-coaster ride of cancer treatment the knowledge to deal with the ordeal was a prime motivation in writing the book, which he calls a "primer on cancer." "It uses patient vignettes to explain cancer and its treatment, in more depth than could be done on the web," he says.
In the nearly two decades Frank has specialized in oncology, a field that attracted him because it was very scientific and challenging, he's seen great strides made in the treatment of cancers. Yet he terms most of them "incremental." "They're advances, but not cures," he says. "We've brought some of the more difficult cancers under control. I think in the future we'll be able to do that even more effectively, basing treatment on each patient's genetic profile.
"The cost of cancer care is tremendous," Frank continues. "And it becomes even more of a struggle when the economy is bad and someone loses their job and health care. But no one ever goes without treatment because they can't afford it."
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