How hungry are you?

The hunger is the will to fight. Before dismissing a course of treatment, cancer patients must decide how hungry they are to beat the cancer.

Radiation

This course of treatment is not open to all patients. Only certain tumorous cancers can be effectively treated with radiation. Excluded cancers include blood cancers (leukemia), bone cancers (osteocarcinoma), certain lung cancers (mesothelioma), Stage 3 and higher lymphoma and many brain and other organ cancers (pancreatic, liver).

Radiation can also be used following surgery for more survival cancers like prostate, testicular, breast, esophageal, peptic and colon cancers.

Side Dishes

Nausea: Extreme enough to cause painful vomiting

Weight loss: Side effect of nausea and body's natural reaction to radioactive materials

Hair loss: Side effect of radioactive materials

Mutations: Some cancers mutate under radiation. Though the tumor is reduced, other cancers (melanoma) can result from extended exposure to radioactive materials.

If the tumor can be reduced, many times the radiation will cause the remaining tumor to enter remission. The remission, or dormancy of the cancer, can last for as little as a few months or as long as a lifetime.

Surgery

Again, this is not an option for many cancers which do not produce tumors. Some tumors are not positioned favorably for removal. Others are perfect (melanoma). For the ones where surgery is available, it, too, has a plateful to accompany it.

Side Dishes

Anesthesia: General anesthesia (GA) has inherent risks, including failure of organs or appendages to successfully regain function after surgery.

Pain: Though typically to reduce pain, most surgery requires opening of muscles or the skull. Post surgery pain is common.

Recovery: Rehabilitation of severed muscle walls and area surrounding removed tumor.

Amputation: Most common variety is mastectomy.

Failure rate: Not all cancer cells are successfully removed when the tumor is removed. Based on the size of the cells and nature of the tumor, 100% success of cancer removal during surgery is far from guaranteed.

Is your appetite spoiling?

Next, we shall talk about chemotherapy and the option of no treatment. Then, we will talk about the appetizers which accompany every single diagnosis of cancer.

Chin up,
Ann Marie

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