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Cancer Connection - December 2007
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Written by Steve Smith
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Monday, 31 December 2007 |
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 I’ve blogged before about the importance of picking the right treatment option if you, or a loved one, have heard those awful words: “You have prostate cancer.” The decision is yours and yours alone. For your sake, don’t leave it up to the doctor, your wife, kids, parents or other prostate cancer patients like me.
Do your research about radical prostatectomy, internal and external radiation, “watchful waiting,” hormone therapy and other methods. Consider your probable life span, the side effects of each treatment.
If you do your homework, stay as calm as possible and make the right decision, chances are good you won’t end up like many of the men in a recent study. In the latest Cancer, researchers say more than a third of the men with early-stage prostate cancer frequently choose treatments that worsen any urinary, bowel or sexual problems they already have.
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Cancer Connection - December 2007
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Written by Steve Smith
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Sunday, 30 December 2007 |
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 I have found that words can really pack power when they're said by somebody to a person who is sick, especially with cancer.
When I was first diagnosed with prostate cancer five years ago, I felt about as low as you could feel. My world had crashed down around me, and I was confronted with battling a disease that had claimed my grandfather and more than 12,000 men a year.
I believed this was the start of my Damascus Road experience, that soon the scales would soon fall from my eyes to reveal something. I just didn’t know what. Comments (1) |
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Cancer Connection - December 2007
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Written by Steve Smith
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Thursday, 27 December 2007 |
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 Also: A warning about aspirin and hormone therapy
I’ve never been one to depend on alternative medicine to treat anything wrong with my body. When I think of such things, George Carlin’s famous hippy-dippy weatherman, Al Sleet, pops into my mind, but as a doctor. I also think of the outrageously funny Dr. Nick Riviera on “The Simpsons.” That’s why I did a double-take when I stumbled across the latest House Calls, the online newsletter by the Mayo Clinic. Doctors at the renowned clinic in Rochester, Minn., say alternative treatments may help you with the anxiety and stress, fatigue, nausea and vomiting, pain, and sleeping difficulties that often accompany chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Comments (2) |
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