To Test or Not To Test

Once you are diagnosed with cancer, you have two key desires:Get the damn thing out of me! Make Sure It Doesn ' t Come Back!So you have surgery and they remove every thing they can. You might have to have more surgery to get those pesky clean margins. Then the give you nasty drugs for chemo and might zap you a few times as well with radiation as well. You might get some pills too. All sorts of fun and games thrown at you. The doctors swear to you that they have done everything possible to get the cancer out of you. So you go back to your oncologists and they tell you... see you in three months! You kind of freak out because you had been getting day to day care from your oncology team and they wanted to know about every fart and sniffle.So you take a deep breath and wait three months. You go back to your oncologist and they tell you: ' your blood work looks fine, see you in another three months ' . You take a really deep breath and ask shakily ' aren ' t there any more tests? How do you know there is no more cancer in me? ' Your oncologist says ' there are no other tests that have been shown to be of any value in following your cancer. ' This is a very real scenario. Although the patient may want more scans or tests to look for any teeny tiny cancer cooties, there may not be any else they can do to look for cancer for you. There is no evidence of your disease. They have no way of looking for anything now. They have to wait until you get some kind ...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: cancer detection cancer diagnosis medical tests Source Type: blogs