AFTER reading the thing on treating cancer with tumor profiling, “Choosing the proper drug” (The Star, Dec 23, 2018), I felt compelled to share my personal experience in beating most cancers. It’s a terrible disease, and I hope my letter will inspire cancer patients to hold their hopes up. However cancer treatments have substantially advanced through the years; however, some contemporary care alternatives fail too many sufferers.
In 2011, I underwent a gastroenteritis test, which discovered that my Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) level was excessive. After further assessments and a biopsy, it was confirmed that I had prostate cancer. For anybody who has looked after the most cancers-affected person or is an affected person himself, the news could have hit him like a tonne of bricks. It turned into no distinctive for me. Shock, disbelief, desperation, and hopelessness – no longer always in that order – hit me, and I became on a consistent roller coaster of emotions in the early days following my diagnosis.
Most trendy physicians look at themselves as caregivers but in no way as an affected persons. As a health practitioner, the desk had grown to become on me, and accepting my cancer analysis became difficult before everything. I became the affected person and speakme to an oncologist to have treatments and my remedy path.
I went to Singapore to meet a urologist, and we decided to continue with the robotic surgical procedure. I changed into journeying backward and forward to Singapore for a demanding and steeply priced remedy. With the aid of my own family and friends, I was slowly given my state of affairs and passed in the direction of the trajectory to efficiently deal with the most cancers. were the,
As it commenced to take a toll on me, I went to Penang to accept the hormonal remedies in which the aim turned into reducing male hormone degrees in my body or forestalling those hormones from affecting the prostate most cancer cells. Years passed, and matters have been progressing in addition to what can be anticipated.
Then, one day in 2016, I couldn’t breathe without problems and felt something was wrong. True sufficient, the chest X-ray and thoracentesis scan discovered that I had advanced lung cancer. It was devastating news to my own family and me.
I then deliberated with my oncologist on similar remedy alternatives to treat lung cancers. In many tumor lineages, just like the one I had, the commonplace gold general of treatment is chemotherapy. The cause is to cure, manipulate, or ease the symptoms suffered with the aid of cancer patients (palliation) with systemic, cytotoxic therapies after having surgery.
Unfortunately, chemotherapy rendered some unfortunate side outcomes, which took a wonderful toll on my fitness. I suffered nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and complications for over a week but eventually recovered. I felt like I became close to giving up my existence.
It became glaring that there is no such thing as a “one-size-suits-all” approach while treating cancer.
2018, following similar studies and discussions with my oncologist, we determined a new method to deal with most cancers after some remedy strains, including tumor profiling.
Being a relatively new technique that most cancer patients may not have heard of, tumor profiling is a shape of testing that classifies a tumor based totally on its genetic makeup to assist in diagnosing and treating the ailment with precision medicine.
Tumor profiling can assist in perceiving remedies that provide the very best possibilities of achievement for individual sufferers at a specific degree in their cancer.
For this reason, a tissue sample of my cancer was despatched to America for checking out. State-of-the-art and superb tumor profiling checks look at most cancer cells’ DNA, RNA, and proteins, searching out mutational changes. The results can assist the health practitioner in finding a satisfactory treatment method for male or female patients.
Two weeks after sending the tissue sample, my document arrived, giving my oncologist meaningful insights into my cancer’s tumor biology and helping him propose a personalized treatment.
It became timely as most cancers had taken a flip for the more severe and stepped forward. This time, I had great luck because the focused medicine thosen due to the test’s findings worked for me. Within a quick period, I ought to experience the improvement myself. I felt hopeful again and became constructive about battling my cancer and beating it once and for all!
When diagnosed with cancer, I wish greater sufferers, together with their oncologists, might have the threat to explore new strategies to remedy.
Understanding the unique and complex tumor biology, personal experience, and a trusted courting among the medical doctor and the patient are vital fulfillment factors to decorate cancer care.
Cancer treatment wishes for a complete technique to warfare the ailment and improve consequences for sufferers. Tumor profiling can doubtlessly help, as it gives oncologists predictive, prognostic, and therapeutic records on someone’s prognosis to treat for higher outcomes noticeably.
As with all matters new, a remedy may be pretty costly, but I am fortunate if you want to finance my treatments.
As an affected person and fashionable doctor, I hope establishments like insurance businesses will consist of comprehensive prognosis platforms like broad tumor profiling of their insurance to enable cancer patients to get admission to personalized, precise, and centered treatments, immune remedies, and clinical trials.
As a medical practitioner
and now a cancer patient, I
accept as true that with the ever-evolving scientific generation and technological know-how, it’s our responsibility to guide patients with reliable, updated, and
correct facts about possibilities and obstacles so they and their loved ones may make knowledgeable choices for their