You Survived

Added: Tue Feb 19th 11:28am
Posted in: Cancer

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You are a cancer survivor from the day you are diagnosed.  We are on track to see nearly 11 million cancer survivors emerging from their treatment in the not too distant future.  It could not be a more exciting and hopeful time for cancer patients.  At any given time countless well established and effective treatments are being supplemented by 100's of  new clinical trials destined to further improve the options and outlook for cancer tratment success.  I have said before that this community of cancer surviors is a new tool in the treatment of cancer.  I believe cancer survivors should play an expanding role in moving the cure rates to ever higher levels.  In addition the potential for social networking amongst cancer patients to dramatically affect each other's quality of life is very real.  The wisdom gained from one person's experience may be just what another survivor needs to get through  a hard day.
The importance of social networking for cancer patients is heightened by the fact that once you have survived, in many cases, the future is none too clear.  In fact it is often decidely unclear.  As happy a place it is to be - a cancer survivor's life is changed forever.  This can be compounded by the way medicine and especially oncology is practised.  Oncologists  [cancer specialists] in my experience are aamong the most knowledgeable and compassionate physicians ever to walk the face of the earth.  Unfortunately the intense level of involvement that oncologists have with their patients cannot go on forever once a cure is established.  Patients are at risk of feeling lost when they re-enter the world of "Primary Care".  This is not to demean primary care but the world of primary care is a busy place and increasingly the domain of physician extenders. They do a great job taking care of the day to day health needs of folks who are really not very sick [especially when compared to cancer].  The discrpeancy between specialty care and primary care is compounded by the explosion of new information about cancer survivorship.  Being a cancer survivor does not mean you can go back to business as usual - there is a real need for the cancer survivor to have long term care that reflects what has transpired in getting to a cure.  New research is providing evidence that there are potential issues related to past treatment that go well beyond the implications of the disease itself.
Why should this be if you are in fact "cured"?  Well, for one thing, while we do think a lot of people are truely cancer free at the end of their treatment - especially if they are diagnosed in a timely manner {as much as 65% depending on the specific type of cancer} we really cannot predict the future accurately.  We can only quote statistics.   We will discuss the implications of this next time as we loook with optimism on what can be done to ensure the best possible life after cancer. experience.