TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR CARE
Being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness such as cancer is a highly emotional experience. The first emotion you feel is disbelief. At first, it’s impossible to really believe that you even have this illness, let alone take charge of how you will be treated for it. That’s absolutely normal. Right away you will be thrown into a of course you need to let the doctors tell you what happens next. Taking charge of your medical care certainly does not mean you should tell the doctors what tests to do or how to do the surgery! That would be quite rediculous for those of us who are not oncologists by profession. So what does “Take Charge of Your Medical Care” mean?
It means this:
AFTER YOU ARE DIAGNOSED, TALK TO A SPECIALIST
Let a general oncologist diagnose you, but then also seek another opinion from someone who specializes in your type of cancer. If your case has any complexity at all, a good oncologist will encourage you to do so and will be able to recommend where you can go to seek a second opinion. (Or you can call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER)
If you do not like your doctor or do not feel that he or she will allow you to take part in deciding what treatments you will have, find another doctor. He or she is not the boss of you, he is eomeone who has expertiese in an extremely complicated field. Your doctor's role should be to inform and advise you as to what treatments are available and the particulars of these treatments, and then to order the administration of the treatments you decide on together. If you want to be as aggressive as possible with your cancer, you need to express this to your doctor. Without input from you, your doctor will give you the standard treatment for your type of cancer. That may be fine if your cancer is a simple case, with high chance of cure, but if it isn't, your doctor needs to know what level of discomfort you are willing to expereince. Communicate with your doctor.
It is also of utmost importance that your doctor be right on the cutting edge of what is new and around the corner in terms of oncology medicines. The drug that is saving my life, (Tarceva) wasn’t even on the market (FDA-approved for use in lung cancer) when I was diagnosed in May 2004. It came out Thanksgiving of 2005, just 5 months before I went on it.
KEEP AN ONGOING APPOINTMENT CALENDAR AND WRITE DOWN ALL YOUR APPOINTMENTS, TESTS AND RESULTS. You will be surprised how often you will be asked by the nurses and doctors "when did you get this" MRI or that scan or "When was your last appointment with....[whomever]". But consider, the nurses and doctors have hundreds of patients. You have only one.
WRITE DOWN WHAT YOU WANT TO ASK YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE YOUR APPOINTMENT.
It’s nearly impossible to remember everything you wanted to know when you’re on the spot. Allow space so that you can write down the answers you get.
DON’T LET SOME DOCTOR’S DEATH SENTENCE BE THE LAST WORD.
If your doctor tells you that you are going to die, don't just believe that. None of us can know what is in the future; Doctors can only know the general statistics for your condition and these statistics are naturally OLD. There are more than 400 targeted therapies in clinical trials, any of which might be exactly what you need to put you in to remission. I myself am what the nurses have called a “miracle” (a word that is easy to use now that I’m in remission, but I remember lying in my hospital room, in the dark, crying and thinking, “I don’t know how to be a miracle. Help me God. How do I be a miracle?” After talking with the first doctor who spoke to me, one could have made a good case for me not even doing chemo; why bother if you can’t win it? And what a horrible waste that would have been for my motherless children!) I know of another patient whose colon-cancer had spread to every major organ in his body. He was told that he had no more than three weeks to live. But he went to a different oncologist, who tried the recently approved drug Avastin on him and he is now in a complete remission.
Taken from "Fighting Cancer" by Richard Bloch
|
Copyright © 2005-2010 Barking Spiders All Rights Reserved
All Songs Copyright © 2005-2010 Barking Spiders All Rights Reserved |
|