MarsAtlas said:
"Inoperable" sounds scary. And it kind of is. But as someone currently in the process of a cancer/health scare (I have very few answers right now), let me throw some knowledge around. TotalBiscuit isn't done for. He might be. But there's still a reasonable hope.
Many cancers are inoperable at the time of diagnoses. At the same time, cancer survival rates (measured over two, five, and ten years) continue to rise. Cancer treatments and cures have progressed at breakneck speed over the last decade or so, and we might in fact be the generation that turns cancer into just one of many trifling health issues. We're not there yet, but there's hope and there's research. And actual survival rates are always a little in advance of the official odds as a result. My own mother was supposed to die from her leukemia, but did not.
The best way to defeat cancer is to identify it early, at an operable stage, and simply remove it. Follow ups are then required, often over the course of several years, to ensure that it has not emerged once more. Most of the time, however, the symptoms of cancer already imply metastasis, which means that the cancer has spread to other parts of the body and continues to proliferate. This is where other treatments, traditionally chemotherapy, come in. But there are also new types of treatments, like immunotherapy, capable of targeting cancer cells without damaging healthy parts of the body. Not all treatments are appropriate for all kinds of cancer, and each person's cancer is unique; after all, a cancer is a mutation of that person's genes that has forgotten how to die.
While cancer treatments continue to improve, one of the biggest challenges is the identification of cancer in younger people. Since cancer symptoms can be so general, doctors are not likely to look for cancers until treatments for other conditions have failed, and that provides more time for the cancer to proliferate. Some are slower and some are quicker; small cell lung cancer, for instance, can kill in a matter of weeks. That's barely enough time for a proper diagnosis to be made, so it's no wonder that long-term survival rates are 2% or thereabouts for that particular brand of lung cancer. And before anyone gets mouthy about setting oneself up for lung cancer, up to 10% of lung cancer cases afflict people who have never smoked. Even if we want to play blame games, though, cancer is a horrific condition that no-one deserves.
Our increasingly artificial lives appear to have some effect on cancer acquisition rates, plus the age groups as risk. People are getting cancer at earlier times in their lives. This might have to do with increasing medical awareness of cancer conditions, but it's also likely that our changing world influences this as well. We breath corrupted air, eat food with high preservative contents, live sedentary lifestyles, and shun sunlight. This provides our bodies with incentives to mutate in order to adapt, while lowering the likes of vitamin D content in our bodies that exist, in part, to help us fight infection. Between 11% and 25% of us are likely to develop some kind of cancer that requires medical treatment in our lifespans.
But would you like to know a better, and happier, horror story?
Many of us, perhaps most of us, have had cancer and defeated it without knowing. Usually, the body's immune system will detect "foreign" influences and destroy them. This may have been over a period of days or even hours. Cancer is simply a natural mutation that runs right out of control, and in some cases, becomes a tumour (or tumours) that require operations, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and/or other treatments.
I wish TotalBiscuit the very, very best. He won this battle before, and I believe he can do it again. And for anyone whose body is feeling at all strange, feeling anything wrong, I would like to discourage you from toughing it out. You never know when you're the unlucky one who is about to fight cancer, but the sooner you get on to it, the more likely you are to win and lead a full life. I understand that different nations have different policies and procedures concerning medical care, and that we live in an era of unprecedented strife outside of sheltered first-world nations. Even so, and even though we often suffer beyond our control, I take life to be a great gift. Do yourself a favour and take your health seriously.
