Читать книгу Cancer is a Word, Not a Sentence - Miriam Stoppard - Страница 23

This question bothers almost every person who has a cancer diagnosis: ‘Do I actually need treatment now?’ (Or, more commonly, ‘Do I actually need more treatment now, after the initial surgery or the biopsy?’)

Because there are so many different cancers, and because each of them can be diagnosed at various stages in various people, it’s actually quite difficult to arrange the spectrum of treatment options into a sensible all-embracing scheme. Nevertheless, I am going to try to do that now. I will lay out a seven-category system that groups the various cancer situations together based on the primary objective or aim of treatment.

This approach is actually novel, so it might seem to some that I am putting very different tumours together under the same heading.

In a way, that’s exactly what I am doing. And it may be very useful to you. It may actually help you to understand the whole objective of the treatment of your own particular tumour if you see it compared with the treatment of another tumour. It is often easier to understand a plan of treatment when you see a range of different situations in which that same plan of treatment is being used.

Of course, it will be an oversimplification. That’s almost inevitable. But even so, in the next few paragraphs I’m going to set out the main issues in a scheme that you can use as you try to line up the treatment options in your mind, and discuss them with your medical team.