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[…] Anxiety, Chronic Pain for Multiple Myeloma Survivors After Treatment […]
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The more chemo and radiation you undergo, the more toxicity your body endures, the more severe your side effects. Multiple Myeloma survivors often experience anxiety and chronic pain.
Multiple Myeloma (MM) patients MUST proceed with chemo, radiation or surgery with the understanding that conventional oncology falls short in explaining possible side effects that may result from your therapy.
MM patients must contend with the fact that your oncologist told you that your cancer was “incurable.” My onc. told me that too…in 1994.
My point is that the reason that conventional oncology believes that multiple myeloma is incurable is because chemotherapy and radiation can’t cure MM. That last sentence was a conundrum. My point is that conventional oncology is wedded to toxic chemo and radiation, neither of which can cure MM.
And conventional oncology continues to bang their head (metaphorically speaking) against a wall by giving MM patients different types of chemo again and again and again. What did Albert Einstein say was the definition of insanity?
Rather than ignore or dismiss the mental and physical challenges of conventional oncology I have tried to identify each side effect and either learn to live with it (my peripheral neuropathy) or heal it.
My fix for chemobrain, for instance, is both to try to physically heal it (nutrition, moderate exercise, brain games) as well as to learn coping mechanisms (write lists, prepare for social gatherings by remembering names, faces, etc.).
My fix for PTSD was to talk to a physiologist. Talk therapy helped but I still have a ways to go.
To learn both mind-body therapy as well as physical therapy, scroll down the page, post a question or a comment and I will reply to you ASAP.
Thank you,
David Emerson
“From anxiety about a cancer recurrence to physical problems such as chronic pain, survivors aren’t quite done battling the effects of cancer even 2, 5, and 10 years after treatment for the disease…”
Yes, side effects from toxic therapies are 2,5,10 or permanent. Some side effects can be late stage (occur after 10-15 years). Chemobrain lasts for years. Nerve damage often is permanent.
“Mary Ann Burg, noted that improvements are needed concerning public awareness of cancer survivors’ problems, honest professional communication about the side effects of cancer, and the coordination of medical care resources to help survivors and their families cope with their lingering challenges…”
Studies combined with my personal experience show that oncs underestimate side effects.
“Personal control — such as the ability to plan and make decisions with regard to one’s own health care, talking about one’s cancer to employers or others, or the ability to move as desired — was one of the dominant themes in the responses, having not been previously identified in the literature on unmet needs…”
Restoration of personal control after aggressive cancer therapy is where PBC shines. Please read the linked article below.
“What about mind-body therapies such as spirituality and religiosity? As the study linked and excerpted below cites, “patients with high religiosity and high spirituality had better physical health overall… compared with low spiritual and low religious patients…”
[…] Anxiety, Chronic Pain for Multiple Myeloma Survivors After Treatment […]
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