Before I go in depth sharing the information about how
cancer is treated and how people are affected by cancer, let’s take a quick
look at what has already been shared about the topic of cancer. We have learned
that cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body. We have
learned about how to live our daily lives in healthy ways while staying mindful
of the risks of getting cancer. We have also learned about how to regularly
visit a doctor to received screenings and tests to help detect the prevalence
of cancer in our bodies. The fourth component of cancer that I would like to
share is about how cancer is treated once it has been detected as a threat in
the body.
Like I mentioned before in the second post, the three
main methods for treating cancer patients once they have been diagnosed are
surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Typically, doctors suggest
surgery to be the first method of attacking and treating the cancer because
most cancers are discovered when a tumor is present in the body. We have
learned that tumors are an excess amount of mutated cells in the body, so when
doctors carefully perform surgery to remove the tumor, then they can gather
more information about whether the tumor is benign or malignant. Cancer cells
tend to spread through the body if they are left untreated, so the next step
after getting a tumor surgically removed is to conduct chemotherapy and/or
radiation therapy. The American Cancer Society at http://www.cancer.org shares what the many different
types of cancer treatment are, and they explain that chemotherapy is the use of
medicines or drugs to treat a cancer and radiation therapy is the use of
high-energy particles or waves to destroy or damage the cancer cells in the body.
Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy have been
scientifically researched to be the most effective methods for treating and
dealing with cancer. However, several side effects are known to impact the
patients when they receive chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. Because both
chemotherapy and radiation therapy are treatments designed to attack the
cancerous cells in a person’s body, they often times come in contact with the
healthier cells in the body, so some physical side effects impact the patient. It
has been known that people receiving radiation and chemotherapy tend to have
their hair cells destroyed so patients often lose some hair on their head and
bodies. Another physical side effect due to the influence of radiation and chemotherapy
is fatigue. The American Cancer Society mentions that fatigue from cancer
treatment is one of the most common and distressing side effects because it is
a much more intense feeling of being tired than what we all feel on occasions. Cancer
patients receiving surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy also experience nausea
and vomiting as well as physical pain due to the destruction of some scar
tissues in the body. More can be research about cancer’s treatments and physical
side effects at http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/treatmenttypes.
References
American Cancer Society. (2014). Treatment types. Retrieved from http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/treatmenttypes/
American Cancer Society. (2014).
Treatments and side effects.
Retrieved from http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/index?sitearea=
