|
|
|
|
|
|
by niketdesai
2462 days ago
|
|
|
You capture the nuance by saying usually. Many people, logically, would arrive to this conclusion. When the treatment starts, one is even energized. Then, in the middle a person regrets being so optimistic at all. They find their assumption of life being better than death more naive than they could have imagined. It's not just the treatment. It is the wider picture of your life stopping. And within that context your body, deteriorating, is only one component. |
|
|
1 - Don't treat the disease and either do nothing or basic palliative care. The cancer is unlikely to go away on its own and will begin to spread to your lungs and liver and brain and mutilate your body until it doesn't function and you die. Less up front pain, possibly less area under the painful waking hours curve, but almost certainly an early death.
2 - Treat using standard of care chemo/surgery/radiation. Doctors do the mutilating and poisoning a bit more selectively, you lose dignity, bodily functions, jobs, relationships and gain a stigma and a curse of uncertainty. Maybe they get the upper hand and you live a life with lower but possibly acceptable quality. Maybe they don't and you still die but possibly a bit more slowly.
There's no good option yet. People are stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. That's why you can't go more than a few hours without hearing about cancer on TV and see walks and fundraisers and ribbons and shaved heads.