Cancer treatment.
Are there two more frightening words in any vocabulary?
If you have any friends or family in it, you know.
But, if it’s never touched up anyone you know, they are only words.
Just words in passing.
Cancer treatment in the winter time is just another season if you’ve got better health than a cancer patient.
Blinding snow storms? Don’t go out.
Icy roads? Don’t go out.
From research and interviews I’ve learned the most important part of the whole deal:
Do not miss a treatment date.
Don’t do it.
The program is designed to go from one day to the next, and it’s up to the patient to get there.
From wherever they live, to the waiting room, to the radiation bench, or chemo recliner, they are dogged in their pursuit of a cancer clear result.
They come in from the coast, from the mountains, from the plains, because they don’t have any other alternatives.
No one pulls up in the driveway with a cancer van.
“Radiation treatment is not just a one-time thing,” says Longacre. “Conventional radiotherapy requires treatment five days per week for five-to-seven weeks at a time. This means that the average rural woman logs more than 2,000 miles of travel over the course of treatment.”
Heavy snow? They show up.
Icy roads? They show up.
They look at a map and find the closest facility for what they need.
No matter how far.
One Example Of Cancer Anxiety
Every cancer patient has one wish at the beginning of treatment: Please fucking work the way it’s supposed to work.
Get the correct dose of chemo, the correct dose of radiation.
One woman’s view on having a port installed, which is a device implanted in the chest for chemo to avoid ruining veins.
Me: You had chemo therapy?
Lady: Yes, thirty years ago.
Me: Did you have a port installed?
Lady: What is a port?
Me: A device to run chemo into your body.
Lady: It sounds like a scam. I got it in my arm like everyone else.
Me: How did it work out.
Lady: Fine. No cancer.
Me: Any side effects?
Lady: Nope. My arm puffed up to twice its normal size, but it went down.
Me: That sounds scary.
Lady: I can’t lift my arm above my shoulder.
Me: That’s bad.
Lady: Listen sonny, cancer is the bad thing. I could have lost my arm and been happy to be alive.
That’s the gist of it for all cancer patients who make it through, glad to be alive.
Example #2: Staying On Schedule
Just as everyone is different, made up differently, responds to things differently, the same goes for cancer doctors.
Cancer Patient (CP): This is the treatment plan then.
Cancer Doctor (CD): Yes. We will use three different chemo-therapies along with a chemo pump for highest efficiency.
CP: Did I tell about my second opinion?
CD: No, but I’m interested.
CP: They said one chemo, no pump, and no hair loss.
CD: That is very interesting.
CP: They also said it wouldn’t affect my voice.
CD: I hear a speech defect in your voice now.
CP: I’ve got a speech defect, and cancer?
CD: A slight speech defect.
CP: I’d rather have a slight cancer.
CD: With my treatment plan it will be slight.
CP: If I survive.
CD: Pardon me?
CP: Look, Doc, first you tell me I’ve got a speech defect when you sound like Daffy fucking Duck, How am I supposed to get on board with all this fucking chemo when the other guy says only one chemo for this cancer and no pump?
CD: We follow strict protocols in my clinic.
CP: I’m no doctor by any stretch but I believe you’re loading up an unnecessary chemo burden. Where are the standards?
CD: How, then, can one clinic be so much different than another for the same cancer treatment. It seems odd, that’s all.
CD: In my decades of experience, my conscience is clear.
CP: That makes me happy for your conscience. My goal is to be cancer clear. That’s what I’m looking for, not your conscience.
CD: You seem overly anxious. Try and settle down, stay calm.
CP: Thank you, that’s a very calming thing to say. ‘Calm down’ always works for you?
CD: That is one of our protocols.
CP: Along with clearing the fucking chemo shelf for the next sucker and loser?
CD: I understand this is a stressful time for you. When would you like to begin. Does next week work?
Cancer Treatment: The Worst For Future Fears
As spooked as people can get when faced with the prospect of cancer treatment, multiply it when parents take their kids in.
Through all kinds of weather, getting there on time week after week dominates their schedule and their mind.
And, as spooked as parents get for their kids, multiply it when the news of childhood cancer research cuts hit the air.
From the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation:
Originally, the spending package included the following:
-
the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0., which would have extended the National Institutes of Health’s Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Program,
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the Accelerating Kids to Research Act, which would have made it easier for children from low-income families on Medicaid to receive specialized cancer treatment across state lines
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the Creating Hope Reauthorization Act, which would have extended a program incentivizing pediatric drug development that has already resulted in the development of 65 new medications
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the Give Kids a Chance Act, which would have allowed children with relapsed cancers to undergo treatments combining cancer drugs with other therapies
Cancer research has been ongoing since the arrival of written history.
From the American Cancer Society:
Our oldest description of cancer (although the word cancer was not used) was discovered in Egypt and dates back to about 3000 BC.
It’s called the Edwin Smith Papyrus and is a copy of part of an ancient Egyptian textbook on trauma surgery.
It describes 8 cases of tumors or ulcers of the breast that were removed by cauterization with a tool called the fire drill.
The writing says about the disease, “There is no treatment.”
We’ve come a long way since then.
Everyone, with no exception, wants the most effective, cutting edge, safe, cancer treatment for themselves and their kids.
Putting stress on funding continuous research harms them all.
Scientists on the verge of a breakthrough treatment are forced to stop.
While they sort out their future at another lab, or change careers, who suffers?
From the Cancer Atlas:
100 AD
ITALY
Greek doctor Claudius Galen (129–216 AD) removed some tumors surgically, but he generally believed that cancer was best left untreated. Galen believed melancholia the chief factor in causing breast cancer, and recommended special diets, exorcism, and topical applications.
17th century
GERMANY
Cancer surgery techniques improved, but lack of anesthesia and antiseptic conditions made surgery a risky choice. German surgeon Wilhelm Fabricius Hildanus (1560–1634) removed enlarged lymph nodes in breast cancer operations, while
Johann Scultetus (1595–1645) performed total mastectomies.
1733 – 1788
FRANCE
Physicians and scientists performed systematic experiments on cancer, leading to oncology as a medical specialty. Two French scientists— physician Jean Astruc and chemist Bernard Peyrilhe— were key to these new investigations.
1779
FRANCE
First cancer hospital founded in Reims. It was forced to move from the city because people believed cancer was contagious.
About David Gillaspie
