Speaking Out About MPNs

Myeloproliferative neoplasms, or MPNs, are not a common type of blood cancer, only occurring in approximately 300,000 individuals in the US, according to Dr. Ruben Mesa.

In this episode of the “CURE Talks Cancer” podcast, we spoke with Mesa about an MPN diagnosis, what patients need to know and why it is important to become informed in order to improve patient-physician conversations.

“My biggest piece of advice is to learn a lot about your disease and also to make notes for yourself both in terms of what you have, what they expect, what questions you have so that you can relay those to your health care provider and really help to overcome that gap in knowledge and understanding,” he said, adding that MPNs are a type of cancer patients often not don’t know about.

“I find that there can be tremendous distress for individuals because of their lack of familiarity with such a disease,” Mesa explained. “For many individuals, when they are diagnosed with this, it's the first time they've heard about it and they have never known anyone else that has had the disease. So, they don't have a good frame of reference. That creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty and distress. The more we can alleviate that; the more individuals are able to come to at least a comfortable understanding of their disease and work to try to move past that.”