To face and fight a disease like the Mesothelioma, takes courage, composure and hope.
Mesothelioma is a malignant tumor residing in the lungs that begins to grow after a brief exposure to asbestos. When it comes to cancer, the public is quite limited on what it can offer, and this is why learning and making informed decisions is extremely crucial to cancer patients. Unfortunately many don’t. The first step is to become informed of the disease, then become informed of all of the different treatments, and only then is should a patient begin to view and judge each option. Courage is priceless, and hope and composure is key. People possessing such mentalities will be the ones who survive and pull through even the most difficult of situations. This is a theory that applies to everywhere in life, reach high.
Cancers are often categorized under the same common treatment of chemotherapy, radiation, and toxic pills. Even the more specific cancers, in this case Mesothelioma, receive the same treatments. Unfortunately these treatments are as bad for you as they are good, because they don’t only kill cancer cells, but they kill good cells too. It’s important to leave these options until the last minute when all other options seem to fail. Knowledge is essential to finding a better treatment from the start, so knowing your own disease comes first, and finding the right treatment would come next.
A good way to begin approaching this problem is to keep calm. When facing a deadly disease one might get a bit nervous and scared that he or she won’t be able to do anything about it. Knowing that a disease can cease one’s life may put that person in an unstable state of mind. Remaining sanguine is quite important, otherwise rational decisions may be overlooked. Finding out stories or percentages of patients with the disease can ease the person, knowing that you’re not the only one with the disease. The patient should talk to their friends and family for comfort and support.
To start off the first thing that should be done is to research the disease. What causes the disease? Where it comes from? Etc. These are all the questions that should be answered way before even deciding which treatment to select. Rhio O’Connor did just that, he learned about the illness first, and only then did he proceed to the next step. The most important part is knowledge and conscious decision making, and that is only reachable if the patient is well informed. This step is probably the most crucial. Doctors often don’t have a personal connection to the patient, so ultimately the doctor cares less than the patient him or herself. Thus, doctors’ opinions concerning the final decision may be “wrong” for that person. Also doctors don’t know the whole situation; they are often unfamiliar with family ethics. These are all reasons as to why a person suffering a disease like the Mesothelioma should conduct their own research first, or at least understand what it is all about.
The second step would be finding out what each of the treatment options are. These range from chemotherapy to radiation to other alternative and still researched options. Different methods utilize different techniques and target different parts to fight off the same disease. Because these techniques are so different, different disease require a different type of care. It is important to fully understand Mesothelioma in order to understand which plan is best. This step is about learning the weaknesses of the disease and what would a possible way to target it. This might be the most important part, where chemotherapy and toxic pills could be avoided.
The final step is to decide of which of the steps is most appropriate. Should only one treatment be used, or incorporate a few together to specifically act upon the disease? Ideally there would be only one treatment, one that would only target the Mesothelioma cancer cells, but as far as we know, no such treatment exists, so it is important to understand and use more than just one option, use several, and in combination they should get as close as possible as to treating only the malignant cells.
By: Gloumakov, Yuri
