Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Stages Of Cancer

Given a choice, would you rather detect your cancer at stage 0 and 1 OR stage 2 and above? Who can you blame when your doctor tells you ‘I’m sorry, but this is stage 4″?

It is say that your life is fated. Yes it is, we can’t stop earthquake or other catastrophe from happening. But if you can detect the disease early and you disregard screening as important in the first place, is this called fate?

No, it’s a result from your own ignorance, who can we blame when we put ourselves to suffer which results in suffering to family members, kids and relatives too?

Make it a point today to schedule for your yearly comprehensive health screening. You can’t be too busy for that. What is more important that your own health? If you never set priority for your health, it could be too late when you discover it.

Cancer is curable, but again it depends on the stage of the disease. The earlier you detect it, the higher your chances are and the lower the costs involved.

The irony is that most people do not seem to give this much thought when they feel no pain. Even if there’s a certain discomfort, we usually like to shrug it off as ‘normal’ symptoms. But the truth is once you feel something is wrong, 80% of the time it’s already too late.

“Colon cancer, nasopharyngeal (nose and throat) cancer are very curable types of cancer when you detect it early, and even lung cancer can be cured if you catch it in the early stages,” says Dr Low.

But if you are looking for proof of progress in the survival time of cancer patients, you do not have to look further than lung cancer.

“Lung cancer used to be fatal, once you get it, within a year you’ll die,” says Dr Low. “If you receive chemotherapy you’ll probably live for eight months to a year, but if you don’t, you could probably only live for six months,” he says.

Excerpt from TheStar.


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