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“Is My Cancer Curable???”
“Is my cancer curable?” This is the question that most newly diagnosed cancer patients ask their oncologists. As a survivor of an incurable cancer, you can be sure that I’ve thought about this issue a lot. I understand why newly diagnosed cancer patients ask this question. It’s one of the first questions that I had when I was diagnosed.
As the article linked below explains, the answer to the question “Is my cancer curable?” is complicated. Age, stage, and type of cancer are just a few of the reasons why “is my cancer curable?” is almost impossible to answer definitively.
But when a newly diagnosed cancer patient asks that question, they probably don’t want to listen to their oncologist spout complicated medical jargon about why an answer to their question would be conjecture… at best. Misleading at worst.
While the video linked below does use a little too much medical jargon for my taste, it does explain why talking about a cancer cure is impossible. Or at least, really difficult.
What Makes Cancer So Hard to Cure
My cancer, multiple myeloma, has been struggling with the fact that it is incurable for a long time. Myeloma governing bodies have been trying to skirt this issue of curing myeloma for years.
“Functional Cure?” Words Matter
In my view, MM patients and survivors, as well as all other cancer patients and survivors, should focus on those advances that have been made in their cancer. Advances in diagnostics, treatments, and even communication, such as telehealth.
There are a dizzying number of evidence-based, non-conventional complementary therapies that can enhance both length and quality of life. An area of cancer care that I think is more important than “Is my cancer curable???”
What are your thoughts? Scroll down the page, post a question or a comment and I will reply to you ASAP.
Thank you,
David Emerson
- Cancer Survivor
- Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
The 10 deadliest cancers, and why there’s no cure
The deadliest cancers aren’t necessarily the ones that kill the most people overall; they’re the ones with the lowest survival rates.
There’s no doubt that cancer is deadly: In the United States, the disease is the second-most-common cause of death, after heart disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Even when diagnosed and treated early, cancer has the potential to kill.
According to the World Health Organization, the three cancers that killed the most people worldwide in 2020 were lung cancer (1.8 million deaths), colorectal cancer (916,000 deaths) and liver cancer (830,000 deaths). Prostate cancer and breast cancer, meanwhile, are among the most common types of cancer.
The number of people a given type of cancer kills each year depends on how many people have it and what percentage of people diagnosed with the cancer survive, Siegel explained. The deadliest cancers are those with the lowest survival rates.
Cancer researchers determine these survival rates with a measure called five-year relative survival. This is the percentage of people who are expected to survive the effects of a given cancer, excluding their risk of other possible causes of death, for five years past a diagnosis, according to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program, a National Cancer Institute (NCI) initiative that collects, analyzes and reports data on U.S. cancer cases.
It’s also important to note that when it comes to cancer, there’s not necessarily a “cure.” In medical terminology, a cure implies that zero cancerous cells remain in the body, and the cancer will never come back. While modern treatments can excise or shrink cancer to the point it’s no longer detectable by imaging or laboratory tests, doctors can’t guarantee every cancerous cell is gone.
Even once a cancer is undetectable, it’s still possible for it to reappear months or years later. For that reason, if treatments are successful, doctors prefer to say a person’s cancer is “in remission” rather than “cured.” If the cancer is in remission for a very, very long time, some doctors may then say the patient is cured.
Here are the 10 deadliest cancers in the U.S., according to SEER five-year relative survival data for cases diagnosed between 2014 and 2020.
Is my cancer curable Is my cancer curable Is my cancer curable