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4:46pm July 30, 2015

madeofpatterns:

Refusing chemo/radiation for incurable cancer is also a broader category than people are usually willing to acknowledge.

There are situations in which cancer treatment has the potential to cure or create stable remission.

There are situations in which cancer treatment has no realistic chance of either cure or improvement, but keeps things stable or slows them down — and people live longer.

There are situations in which treatment doesn’t extend life but does make cancer symptoms more tolerable (eg: palliative radiation).

There are situations in which it’s very unlikely that treatment will have any benefit at all.

And life-extending non-curative treatment gets discussed as though it’s the same as probably-futile treatment. And it *isn’t*.

Yes, all of this.  Cancer, and its treatment, is way more complicated than people who haven’t had to deal with it have any idea about.  And even more complicated than a lot of people who have had to deal with it know about.  (Don’t get me started on pain management and the dogma on both sides from people who know nothing about how it actually works.  And the times that pain management gets used as a euphemism for euthanasia, and the other times that badly-done pain management gets seen as proof that nothing can be done to manage pain, and the times that pain management is done right – which isn’t nearly as often as people think it is, even doctors – but it’s not enough and someone just wants to die already, and on, and on, and on.)