Research Essay December 8, 2003 Final Copy 10: 00 MWF Cancer In this paper I’m going to enlighten the reader on the struggles and hardships that people have living and maintaining with cancer. The stress that cancer causes is enough to change the emotional balance of ones environment. Physical pain is a factor that causes a person with cancer to do not want their life to continue. Some more factors that people deal with while assessing cancer are emotional pain, treatment, expenses, and just learning to how to cope with cancer. Cancer is a sickness that interferes with a person’s life and changes their daily schedule and also effect’s his or her families regular activities.
Cancer strikes one out of every three people, almost every family will hear that dreaded word in a personal way. “Pain is one of the most commonly feared symptoms of cancer ” said David Mata char, MD, director of the Duke University Center for Clinical Health Policy Research and senior author of the paper. This section of the paper gives readers a personal experience with a person who has cancer. To understand the physical and emotional pain of cancer I interviewed a close friend of mine and asked her to explain the emotional and physical pains of having cancer. She started off saying that “once she found out that she had cancer so many thoughts rushed threw her head.” She wondered first is she would loose her hair or not.
Then by having cancer would people treat her a certain way just because she has cancer when they found out. Would she be able to continue her everyday activities. Could she one day have children and in fact pass it on unto them. She thought that she was going to die as is if she was on a time clock. Secondly she felt that she would be on her own without help, without someone she could depend on. The physical pains she endured was the sickness she felt after chemotherapy and radiation.
The soreness she felt after surgery from being cut open and sown back together. Feeling of tiredness during the day was a pain for her when she knew that there was things still to be done. Pain from the daily exercise workouts she had been instructed to do. To maintain a certain level of healthiness. Certain times of the day were her body wanted to shut down but she forced it to carry on. The taking of so many pills a day caused her to be drowsy and restless.
She said” she knew she just couldn’t give up so she coped with having cancer and continues to have better work ethics of maintaining cancer. This portion of the paper is going to talk a little about the treatment and expenses that come along with having cancer. For “a few pennies a month,” healthcare providers can consistently manage and control cancer pain much more effectively using guideline-based care than more everyday traditional approaches, according to a new Duke University Medical Center study. Guideline-based pain management is a normal approach to calming down using a pre-determined treatment plan for patients. Other approaches by doctors or etc. is less effective and depends on the knowledge of pain and treatment intervention as well as if the patient is willing to call the doctor to report pain and ask what help or assistance they could get.
New cancer drugs may have their biggest impact on the littlest patients. Conventional treatments have worked wonders in children with cancer: before 1970, young patients had little chance of survival; today, three quarters make it past the critical five-year mark. But standard chemotherapy and radiation can ravage a child’s body and brain in ways that may not show up until years later. Greta Greer, manager of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Survivors Network, says: ‘It’s not all over when the treatment is over.’ The majority of today’s adult survivors of childhood cancer were treated, pediatric oncologists were focused first and foremost on saving their patients, despite the toxic cost. Children with leukemia, for example, routinely received radiation to their heads and spines to prevent cancer cells from infiltrating the fluid around their brains. While the treatment helped contain the cancer, it also damaged healthy neurons, leading to learning disabilities or attention problems later on in some patients it caused physical injury as well.
Conventional therapy can also cause stunted growth, infertility, lung damage and even secondary cancers. This portion of the paper is going to be ways to just make sure things are alright. Proper treatment of cancer is a big factor as well as just knowing the knowledge. Just knowing symptoms of cancer without really knowing what cancer is about can help a person. Significant advances are being made almost daily in developing “smart” cancer-fighting agents that will take on cancer cells without destroying the good cells. We are told that few cancers are the result of family health history, but that 60 percent of cancers are the result of lifestyle — 30 percent from tobacco and 30 percent from diet.
In one way, that is a message of hope. Using a mathematical model that describes the interplay of clinical decisions and economics, the researchers found that guideline-based cancer pain management offered effective pain relief in 80% of patients compared to 30 % effectiveness for the “as needed” pain management by non-specialty providers. Pain management by oncologists was slightly more effective, but still managed the pain of only 55% of patients. By the Cancer Weekly editors from staff and other reports. The struggles and hardships that people endure while living with cancer could stress someone out to where they could forget about their self-worth.
In my opinion physical pain and emotional pain are two of the biggest factors when trying to cope with having cancer. As far as physical pain goes your body becomes so weak at times to where your almost helpless. Emotional pain could eat a person up on the inside to where they would think negative all the time, make it to were they wouldn’t want help or push themselves away from those family member that are trying to help them. The self-drive one should have would be erased and could lead to other medical problems.
Once a person looses the will power to take charge and go out there on there own to make things right or better it makes it hard for them to and maintain cancer and it’s many obstacles. It also blocks their ability to intake knowledge to prevent or maintain themselves throughout the process.