Effects of Cancer

Research Essay

December 8, 2003

Final Copy

10:00 MWF

Cancer

In this paper I’m going to enlighten the reader on the struggles and hardships that people have living and maintaining with cancer. The stress that cancer causes is enough to change the emotional balance of ones environment. Physical pain is a factor that causes a person with cancer to do not want their life to continue. Some more factors that people deal with while assessing cancer are emotional pain, treatment, expenses, and just learning to how to cope with cancer.

Cancer is a sickness that interferes with a person’s life and changes their daily schedule and also effect’s his or her families regular activities. Cancer strikes one out of every three people, almost every family will hear that dreaded word in a personal way. “Pain is one of the most commonly feared symptoms of cancer ” said David Matachar, MD, director of the Duke University Center for Clinical Health Policy Research and senior author of the paper. This section of the paper gives readers a personal experience with a person who has cancer. To understand the physical and emotional pain of cancer I interviewed a close friend of mine and asked her to explain the emotional and physical pains of having cancer. She started off saying that “once she found out that she had cancer so many thoughts rushed threw her head.” She wondered first is she would loose her hair or not. Then by having cancer would people treat her a certain way just because she has cancer when they found out. Would she be able to continue her everyday activities. Could she one day have children and in fact pass it on unto them. She thought that she was going to die as is if she was on a time clock. Secondly she felt that she would be on her own without help, without someone she could depend on. The physical pains she endured was the sickness she felt after chemotherapy and radiation. The soreness she felt after surgery from being cut open and sown back together. Feeling of tiredness during the day was a pain for her when she knew that there was things still to be done. Pain from the daily exercise workouts she had been instructed to do. To maintain a certain level of healthiness. Certain times of the day were her body wanted to shut down but she forced it to carry on. The taking of so many pills a day caused her to be drowsy and restless. She said“ she knew she just couldn’t give up so she coped with having cancer and continues to have better work ethics of maintaining cancer.

This portion of the paper is going to talk a little about the treatment and expenses that come along with having cancer. For “a few pennies a month,” healthcare providers can consistently manage and control cancer pain much more effectively using guideline-based care than more everyday traditional approaches, according to a new Duke University Medical Center study. Guideline-based pain management is a normal approach to calming down using a pre-determined treatment plan for patients. Other approaches by doctors or etc. is less effective and depends on the knowledge of pain and treatment intervention as well as if the patient is willing to call the doctor to report pain and ask what help or assistance they could get. New cancer drugs may have their biggest impact on the littlest patients. Conventional treatments have worked wonders in children with cancer: before 1970, young patients had little chance of survival; today, three quarters make it past the critical five-year mark. But standard chemotherapy and radiation can ravage a child's body and brain in ways that may not show up until years later. Greta Greer, manager of the American Cancer Society's Cancer Survivors Network, says: "It's not all over when the treatment is over." The majority of today's adult survivors of childhood cancer