On the July 4th weekend between her junior and senior year in high school, Crystal Denlinger\u2019s parents visited her at her lifeguarding job to break the news that her father had kidney cancer. It was 1993, and the only treatment at the time, doctors had told them, was surgery to remove the tumor. \u201cBut there really were no drugs to treat the cancer,\u201d Denlinger says. \u201cSo, if the cancer came back, they said, that was going to be a problem.\u201d The experience navigating a cancer diagnosis with her father was transformative.<\/p>\n
She planned to become a doctor \u2014 she had told her first-grade teacher as much \u2014 and to apply to TCNJ\u2019s seven-year medical program. But this was a firsthand lesson in the trials of the patient experience. \u201cI understood the uncertainty of a cancer diagnosis \u2014 and how that changed so much for our family,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Now, as senior vice president, chief scientific officer at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, Denlinger makes sure patients dealing with cancer are armed with both the information and care they need. The NCCN is a not-for-profit alliance of 31 leading cancer centers that work together to research treatments and develop care standards. And those standards, says Denlinger, ensure equity in treatment. While she was able to expertly navigate her father\u2019s care until his passing in 2008 \u2014 and also help her mother when she was diagnosed with breast cancer nine months later \u2014 she knows not everyone is lucky enough to have a \u201cdaughter doctor\u201d in the family.<\/p>\n
The kinds of guidelines that NCCN produces not only improve survival outcomes and lower costs on the medical side, she notes, but also make sure that everyone gets the same level of care, no matter who or where they are.<\/p>\n
Denlinger\u2019s role at the NCCN also involves managing research into new cancer therapies, which offers her an exciting, hopeful perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that we can continue to define the right therapy, for the right patient, at the right time,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that is not just about the molecular biomarkers of the tumor, but also what\u2019s in line with the patient\u2019s wishes in terms of goals of care and quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Denlinger sees patients as a medical oncologist at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia once a week and will occasionally share her story with the family of her patients \u2014 especially with kids who are struggling with a parent\u2019s cancer diagnosis. She tells them that she\u2019s been there, too. \u201cI do know what it\u2019s like to sit in that chair next to the exam table and listen when bad news is given,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that does help sometimes, especially when we\u2019re having hard conversations about what the future holds.\u201d<\/p>\n
In those moments, Denlinger reflects on something her father told her the summer before he died. \u201cMy dad said that this experience will make me a better doctor,\u201d says Denlinger. \u201cI\u2019d like to hope that I\u2019m living up to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Picture: Bill Cardoni<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a physician and daughter, Dr. Crystal S. Denlinger \u201998 is in the right position to set the standards for cancer patient care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":300,"featured_media":11870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11869"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12351,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11869\/revisions\/12351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}