Blog 147 Monday 28th January 2013

Whilst sympathising with me, people close to me, often say that I must have come into contact with something in the past. Something, that has caused my cancer, especially reflecting also on my first wife's lost battle with cancer last year.  My life style was a lot different from my siblings. I chose a very stressful  career path.  I dropped everything and lived on different continents. I was not particularly good at being very active or frequently exercising and never really worried about a healthy diet. All the bad things that cancer awareness campaigns warn us about............................ I also believe that this disease is dormant in us all and any or all of the above is a trigger..........early diagnosis is the key

Feb 4 marks World Cancer Day 2013, an annual event that aims to raise awareness of cancer and to encourage efforts in prevention, detection, and treatment.

 

An article caught my eye

Cancer awareness campaigns: dispelling the myths

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(13)70027-5/fulltext

 

I have recently blogged that I was unhappy at the news from my oncologist that I would not necessarily be given further chemotherapy I was originally diagnosed with stage II colon cancer so seeing the following statistics sort of helped, quite bazaar...........................

 

Quote

"Analysis of data from patients treated outside clinical trials suggests that adjuvant chemotherapy for stage II colon cancer provides less than a 3% absolute improvement in survival at 5 years. This is remarkably close to the small degree of benefit suggested by controlled studies. An overview of the data suggests that surgery alone cures approximately 75% of stage II patients. Between 20% and 25% of patients experience disease recurrence despite surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy, whereas adjuvant chemotherapy cures between 1% and 6%. In stage III patients, the benefit of adjuvant therapy is greater overall. The extent of benefit relates to tumor grade, invasion, and nodal involvement."

 

Unfortunately I fell into the 20%-25% of patients that experience recurrence. Oncologists do not take the real life problems of the chemotherapy side effects lightly.

 

My next CT scan date 15th February bring it on.....................................................I felt really good today!!