Your journey with cancer

Although an experience with cancer is something you’d never choose, it is something you can handle.

No one wants to be given a diagnosis of cancer, but the reality is that one in every three adults in the United States receives this news at some point in life. In fact, more than a million people are diagnosed with cancer every year. While those numbers can be intimidating, it’s important to remember that there are also millions of people who are living with cancer, winning the fight one day at a time. In the past 20 years, cancer survival rates have improved significantly — and the odds are getting better all the time.

There are other reasons to be hopeful as well. Increased awareness about cancer means that people are speaking more openly about their experiences, reaching out, and building communities to support each other. And as the scientific understanding of cancer and how to overcome it deepens — drawing on areas as diverse as molecular biology, immunology, robotics, computer engineering, and particle physics — the field of cancer research also becomes more collaborative and innovative, creating a culture of constant change and improvement that is reflected in new treatment techniques.

Your personal path

One important change in perspective is that what doctors once thought of as a small family of illnesses they now recognize as an extremely diverse group of related conditions. This means that the all-or-nothing, one-size-fits-all approach that was once typical of cancer treatment is giving way to a much more dynamic and varied set of strategies tailored to your unique diagnosis and individual health needs.

Your experience with cancer is also unique. Your path from diagnosis to recovery may be direct. Or it may be a circuitous journey, during which you and your healthcare team employ a variety of strategies to keep the cancer at bay.

With new therapies, people are able to live longer, more productive lives with advanced cancer. And even those in the most intense phases of treatment often experience far fewer side effects than they might have just a few years ago, enabling them to participate more fully in everyday life.

The road ahead

Cancer is likely one of the most difficult challenges you will ever face, but you may be better equipped to deal with it than you realize. Your body has many built-in cancer-fighting mechanisms — as a routine matter, your immune system kills many pre-cancerous and cancerous cells on its own every day. You can also call on your physical, emotional, and spiritual resources — the healthy foods you eat, the friends and family who support you, the activities that nourish your body, mind, and spirit — so that you will soon feel ready to take the next step.

Cancer milestones

While everyone’s experience with cancer is different, there are several clearly defined milestones or stages of the journey. Some people may spend longer at one stage than others, while some may pass through certain stages more than once. And different people will leave and enter the cycle at different points.

Diagnosis: Tests to confirm the presence of cancer, and its location, type, extent, and other characteristics.

Treatment: Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and other conventional medical therapies, alone or in combination. Ideally integrated with non-invasive complementary therapies, such as nutrition and naturopathic medicine.

Recovery: A return to normal life, while taking steps to prevent a recurrence or progression, including healthy lifestyle choices and follow-up appointments.

Aftercare: Working with caregivers to improve quality of life and deal with potential long-term side effects of treatment.

Early detection

One of the rare certainties about cancer is that the earlier it’s detected, the easier it is to treat. For example, doctors estimate that colon cancer deaths could be cut in half — 26,000 deaths prevented — if people were screened regularly, starting at age 50 in most cases. And because some other cancers, including those of the prostate, cervix, and uterus, often present early warning signs, those illnesses may be forestalled with routine screening and testing.

Many people avoid preventative screenings or follow-up appointments after successfully completing treatment because they fear the outcome, the procedures are unpleasant, or simply because they put off taking care of their health until a serious problem surfaces. But, by then, they often have lost valuable time to take early action against cancer.

The sooner you detect cancer, the sooner you can harness your resources and the resources of the healthcare community to take action. That’s true whether you’ve never had cancer or are concerned about a recurrence or progression of the disease.