Description
The everyday reality of living with Stage IV (also known as
metastatic or advanced) cancer is not something you will hear about on
the evening news. Nor will it make the front page of the New York
Times. Instead, you will hear or read about the latest medical
“breakthrough,” regardless of whether there is any significant scientific
evidence of efficacy, of benefit over a similar drug. What those of us
who read the fine print of such articles, work in the cancer field, or
participate in a drug trial learn is that these therapies generally carry an
enormous price, both personal and financial, affecting most intimately the
person receiving treatment and their loved ones, but also society at large.
Indeed, conventional cancer treatments and trials are trials to patients and
families, not only physically, but also psychologically and emotionally.
This is not something many doctors talk about or care to hear about from
patients. Descriptions of emotional and existential pain, and the
unpleasant, intrusive side-effects of personal and familial suffering, such
as fear, anger, and uncertainty, does not make it into the patient’s clinical
chart. One person, in a recent cancer support group, compared the long
term impact of living with metastatic breast cancer to the symptoms of
PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). The term survivor, applied to
anyone who has ever had a cancer diagnosis and is still living, is apropos
to people surviving the extreme ups and downs of treatment. In this
sense, family members and significant others are survivors too. As with
other crises that threaten our sense of safety and security, bonds either
strengthen or break. For individuals and relationships that survive
cancer, as not all do, it is a shared journey.