Originally Posted by
bandaidwoman
Now remember, we have come a long way. Lance Armstrong had metastatic cancer to his lungs and brain, how powered chemo helped him at that stage.
80% of childhood leukemia is now curable. It was almost 100% death rate before.
There are cancers that we don't have to tackle to the ground with chemo, I watch all my elderly with CLL with just watchful waiting and most never need chemo.
Myelodysplastic syndrome in your 50s was a death sentence, ( your bone marrow just shuts down producing any red blood cells, platelets and white cells) but thanks to bone marrow transplantation, we can cure it.
The answer is cancer genomics. We are learning that we can now genetically type certain breast cancers and know if chemo is even going to help at all!
My father in law had signet cell colon cancer with 22 lymph node involvement, not the more curable adenocarcinoma, his oncologist pretty much told him nothing was going to help his very aggressive colon cancer including high powered chemo ( the guy was honest), but in his case, my father in law opted for everything. The oncologist did not want to deny him even the 1% chance and gave him the chemo, telling him it was all experimental. In that case, the patient made the demand. I know. His oncologist even told him to look for alternative therapy since traditional did not help metastatic signet cell.