Cancer can be treated. Moreover, it can be cured. The diagnosis is crushing, the thought of death arises because it has to appear, but regardless of whether the shock has passed or is still ongoing, treatment begins. Cancer therapy is not the sham of helpless doctors who simulate some ineffective activity in order to cheer the patient up a little. Cancer is being treated.
Chemotherapy
On a certain level of generality, we can say that the human body is made up of cells. Cells make tissues, tissues make organs, organs form systems, and of course that’s not the end, but that’s enough. The vast majority of our body’s cells know what to do and where to do it. They cooperate with us, help us function, are on our side. Cancer is also cells. Only from the opposite team. Cancer cells divide uncontrollably and unnecessarily. They are hostile to us, attack these “good cells”, devour properly functioning bodies, spread even to distant places and eliminate healthy organs and tissues very quickly. This is a very simplified scheme, but it allows you to visualize your enemy and appreciate the guns that are being deployed against him. Cancer therapy is all about eliminating as many hostile cells as possible before they can cause irreparable damage and spread throughout the body.
As the name suggests, chemotherapy is treatment with chemical agents, in cancer therapy they are cytostatic drugs. They are highly toxic and destroy the body’s cells. The good news is that cancer cells are falling victims. The bad news – healthy, good cells are also damaged. It is the destruction of cells that causes hair loss (not only on the head – some women who have undergone a cycle of chemotherapy joke that after all these suffering they should at least permanently stop the painless and free laser hair removal effect of the whole body), reduce the amounts produced by the bone marrow white and red blood cells.
The type and amount of cytostatic drugs is selected individually for each patient, both in terms of their anti-cancer effect and potential side effects. Although this does not always indicate the patient’s well-being during chemotherapy, he or she receives an ideal mixture composed especially for him. Besides, the effectiveness of chemistry is not confirmed by the presence or absence of side effects.
Basically, chemotherapy can be taken intravenously or orally. Until recently, only the first method was practiced, requiring regular visits to the hospital, but studies show that oral chemotherapy does not differ from intravenous chemotherapy, and may even reduce the severity of side effects. In addition, it has the great advantage that it can be taken at home, and relieving the patient from having to contact the hospital atmosphere is important for his mental well-being. However, this is what worries doctors: when they hand a tablet into the patient’s hands, they lose control over the course of therapy, they have no influence on the dosage and regularity of use. Nevertheless, it seems that chemotherapy will move towards “tabletization” whenever possible.
The goal of chemotherapy is always the same, but due to the method of achieving this goal, we can distinguish, among others, radical chemotherapy, when chemotherapy is the only method of treating a given tumor, initial chemotherapy, which is to reduce the tumor even before the planned surgery, and adjuvant chemotherapy, which is started only after surgery. Its task is to fight the remnants, i.e. micrometastases left over from the treatment.
Chemotherapy is scary because it is associated with terrible side effects. It happens, however, that the patient, apart from general weakness, does not feel any particular inconvenience, some say, for example, that they feel like a longer hangover, others only suffer from diarrhea, and a large group does not even feel a hair from the head. Those who will be less fortunate and the chemotherapy will give them a hard time should ask the doctor for antiemetics and other drugs that can reduce unpleasant sensations.
Also read: Is it possible to recover hair after chemotherapy and radiotherapy?
Radiotherapy
This very effective method of cancer therapy can be associated with science-fiction movies. The very idea of the radiation it heals and the form of the procedure differ from the typical hospital pill-syringe therapy.
Ionizing radiation is as dangerous as it is miraculous in this case. The most commonly used rays are gamma rays, radium and cobalt. The two main techniques of radiotherapy treatment are brachytherapy and teleradiotherapy. Brachytherapy is a contact method – the radiation source is placed in the tumor itself or in its immediate vicinity. In teleradiotherapy, the radiation source is placed at a distance from the tumor. It requires great precision, because the radiation dose is so large that it cannot accidentally hit a place not assumed by the doctor. With the help of a special marker, it will mark points on the patient’s body that will limit the area of irradiation and prevent accidental tissues from being targeted. Sessions are usually performed every day except weekends for about six weeks, although of course it all depends on the individual recommendations of the attending physician. The entire procedure takes about twenty minutes, of which the irradiation itself takes less than five. It is completely painless, but it can be so stressful that the patient is left alone in a room called the bunker, on a special bed he drives under a huge and roaring machine, the heads of which move over him. Of course, all the time he is within the voice and sight of the doctor who is behind the glass and watches over the entire fugitive. While the patient must remain motionless, he can (and should!) Breathe completely freely. Radiotherapeutic treatments are directed against a specific tissue, so after the treatment the patient is not irradiated or radioactive, does not glow in the dark, does not become a superhero, can freely contact people and poses no threat to anyone.
Side effects may be similar to chemotherapy: digestive system rebellion, dry mucous membranes, decreased immunity, skin damage.
hormone therapy
The neoplasms include a subgroup of hormone-dependent tumors. They arise from tissues that depend on the action of one or more hormones to function properly. Such cancers include breast cancer, endometrial cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, and thyroid cancer. The essence of hormone therapy is to change the hormonal environment, i.e. to reduce or inhibit the amount of hormones secreted by the body, so that the growth of cancer cells is not stimulated by them.
The condition for introducing hormone therapy is conducting a tumor sample examination in order to determine whether there are hormonal receptors on the surface of cancer cells that react to the presence of hormones, capture them and attach them to each other. If they are absent, therapy is considered pointless.
Hormone therapy is comparable to chemotherapy in therapeutic effectiveness, although it takes longer to achieve effects. The pluses, however, include lower toxicity.
It is most often used in the treatment of breast cancer in women, in which the side effects resemble those of menopause.
People undergoing cancer therapy have to keep telling themselves that although they sometimes feel so bad that they have the impression that the doctor wants to finish them off, paradoxically this malaise leads to a cure. Like a nasty disease, such a nasty therapy, but it is treated to be healed, you have to believe it.
Julia Wolin
- Read also about the importance of psycho-oncology!
- Chinese Medicines Eliminate Cancer – Supporting Chinese Medicine
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