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Living with Advanced Cancer
Bob Riter
bob@ibca.net
When you're first diagnosed with cancer, you cross a bridge that separates the “healthy” from those with cancer. You're entering a scary place, but the focus is on curing the cancer and getting back to the land of the healthy.
There's another bridge that's less visible to the general public. This bridge separates people with early-stage cancer from those with advanced cancer. When cancer is advanced, spreading beyond its initial site, treatment generally focuses on controlling - rather than curing -- the cancer.
Those of us who have been diagnosed with cancer know this bridge. People with early-stage cancer are scared of it. People with advanced cancer are aware that they've crossed it. Not only are they different from the “healthy” people, they're different from most other people they know who have cancer.
Living with advanced cancer is living with uncertainty. If you take time off from work for treatment, you wonder if you'll be able to return. You wonder what will happen if your current treatment stops being effective. You wonder what the future holds for you and your family.
You may hesitate to share your fears with others. Not with your family and close friends because you want to protect them. Not with acquaintances because it's just none of their business. And not even with people with early-stage cancer because you see the frightened look in their eyes when you tell them that you've had a recurrence.
But people with advanced cancer often live for many years with a good quality of life. It's increasingly thought of as a chronic disease that can be managed with chemotherapy and other treatments.
And there are resources. The Ithaca Breast Cancer Alliance (277-0960) operates a support group specifically for women with advanced breast cancer. CancerCare (www.cancercare.org, 800-813-4673) offers online and telephone support for men and women with any type of advanced cancer.
Talking with a therapist provides a safe and supportive environment in which you can express your fears as an individual and/or as a family. And many people derive strength and comfort from their faith communities.
The Palliative Care Program of Hospicare and Palliative Care Services (272-0212) is a wonderful local resource that focuses on improving the quality of life of persons with serious illness by reducing pain and other symptoms caused by the disease or its treatment. Palliative care is available to anyone with a serious illness, regardless of life expectancy.
The National Cancer Institute (800-4-CANCER) produces some excellent brochures including, Coping with Advanced Cancer and When Someone You Love Has Advanced Cancer: Support for Caregivers.
Another brochure with a great title is from the Y-Me National Breast Cancer Organization: I Still Buy Green Bananas: Living with Hope, Living with Advanced Breast Cancer. Copies of these brochures are available in the Cancer Support and Information Program at Cayuga Medical Center (in the Department of Radiation Medicine) and at the Ithaca Breast Cancer Alliance, 612 West State St. I'd also be happy to mail copies to you if you contact me at 277-0960 or at bob@ibca.net.
From the Ithaca Journal, March 8, 2007
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