Yes I just said that and no it's not click bait. I got diagnosed with cancer a half year ago and I thought that that just means your going to die. Maybe slowly, maybe in some months... but you are basically already dead. This is not the case in modern times. We detect cancer earlier and we understand it much much better than in the past.
What is cancer?
Cancer isn't a disease but more a group of diseases were abnormal cell growth creates problems. Cancer happens around 14 millions times a year and 8 of them die each year. At least a third of them could be prevented by living healthier. The rest is mostly genetic, bad luck and more and more old age. The number one killer is lung cancer due to smoking around the age of 70.
I got Sarcoma stage 4 and now?
Sarcoma is a type of cancer with many sub varities. Mine is called undifferentiated sarcoma and is extremely rare. All sarcoma's combined are roughly 1% of all cancer diagnoses. I got stage 4 what is the last stage. My left hip, vertebrae, right upper leg, thigh and my shoulder were affected. This resulted in 5 operations,8 chemos and countless scans in 6 months. 3 times a biopsy, a new hip, a metal pin in my right leg and a catheter port because my veins are very deep in my body. I would be a terrible junky because I can't find my own veins!
On top of this the amount of painkillers I had to take was immense. Paracetamol, Ibuprofen, Xanax, Retard, Morphine, Fentanyl, Tramal, Aclexa, Mydocalm this stopped half way the treatment when a tumor was removed that was pressing on my nerves. In my battle I went from 77kg to 50 and back to 72kg a wild ride.
So why the hell do I say that it isn't so bad anymore?
This is because cancer isn't even in the top 10 causes of death anymore. Even if we filter and look only at the rich countries. We see lung cancer on the 4th cause of death but this is 85% because of smoking..
The war against cancer is slowly won and the chemotherapies are much better than tens of years ago. The 5-year survival rate went from 48 to 70% in the last 40 years. This is not spectacular but we are getting there! More and more types of cancer can be cured or controlled by modern medicine. It stays a disease where you go through hell, your family and especially my girlfriend. But all in all cancer doesn't mean death.
Cancer future
Cancer will keep increasing because the population grows, we get older and our environment becomes more and more polluted. The good thing is that modern medicine is making big steps. Some cancers can already be cured, targeted drugs, we have upcoming imunotherapies and cheaper and more available scans. A good article about future predictions of experts is here.
