A new diagnosis of cancer can be a shock, making you feel out of control and overwhelmed. Recalling anecdotal cancer stories can provide a general idea about cancer, but may lead to misconceptions about your own specific disease. If you have been newly diagnosed with cancer, an investigative approach will help to dispel misconceptions and empower you with knowledge that will facilitate your journey for care and treatment. Get the facts straight, find out what results you can expect from treatment, determine your responsibility as a patient and understand your medical team’s role.

Get the Facts Straight

Define cancer and treatment in general terms and your disease specifically. A basic comprehension of cancer and cancer terminology is crucial to researching your disease. Next, understand that unlike some diseases or conditions, the treatment of cancer rarely requires emergency treatment and should involve a multi-stepped treatment approach. To keep your options open, it is imperative that you obtain a diagnosis, explore treatment options and get a second opinion(s) before you actually receive treatment. That way you can choose your treatment course rather than letting it choose you. Learning as much as possible about cancer, terminology, treatment strategies and your specific disease will help you cope with the positive or negative realities of your cancer diagnosis.

Once you get the facts straight, then establish that your cancer type and stage have been definitively determined and ask how. Make sure you are comfortable that your diagnosis is accurate. If the stage has not been identified, find out what tests will be used to establish the stage. Also, find out if there are factors that put you at high risk or low risk for recurrence within your stage.

What Can you Expect from Treatment

Once the stage of your disease has been determined, it is important to understand the results you can expect from treatment. This can be the hardest part of a new diagnosis, but is critical in defining your quest for optimal treatment. Treatment can range from curative to non-curative. For example, the treatment of most early stage cancers (stage I) may be curative or mostly curative, while many later stage diseases may have treatment that is statistically non-curative. Non-curative treatment may be aimed at prolonging cancer-free survival time in months or years or alleviating symptoms of the cancer to improve the quality of remaining life. Non-curative treatment may open a door for experimental therapies (clinical trials) that may offer hope and be effective on an individual basis.

Define Your Role and Your Medical Team’s Role

As a newly diagnosed patient, initially establishing your responsibility and defining your medical team’s role will optimize the search for information and subsequent quality of treatment. You are responsible for finding information and appropriate treatment. Asking the right questions and finding the right doctors for your medical team to ensure optimum care and appropriate treatment for your situation is up to you. To find the right questions, use information resources like your medical team, books, the Internet and other patients with your disease. While absorbing this information and applying it to your situation, consider the source and question the goals of the information provider. Be wary of blindly accepting information that may seem too good to be true or too bad to be true.

To make the most of your medical team you must first acknowledge your role in your treatment and then understand your medical team and how it works for you. The multidisciplinary approach to cancer treatment and the resulting medical team is a novel concept to most of us who are used to only seeing a family doctor or general practitioner (GP). As a cancer patient, your treatment will require an entire medical team since the steps of cancer treatment are beyond the scope of a single doctor. Furthermore, the methods of actual treatment delivery are various, requiring different specialty doctors (oncologists). For example, if your treatment strategy includes chemotherapy, surgery and radiation your medical team may include a medical oncologist, surgical oncologist and radiation oncologist in addition to your primary diagnosing doctor.

Once you understand why you need a medical team, you need to understand how to use them. Use the doctors in your medical team as guides to your disease, but relying on their information alone or limiting the number of doctors in your medical team may exclude critical resources for informed treatment decisions.

Consider the Source and Get a Second Opinion

Just like any resource you use, consider the source and get a second opinion(s). A doctor in your medical team will inform you of your disease based on varying degrees of knowledge and experience that result in different perspectives and specialties. For example, a specialist dealing with a particular disease daily will have a different perspective than a GP dealing with a particular disease a few times a year. This perspective will permeate the advice they give you.

Also, consider a doctor’s specialty ranging from providing primary information, standard treatment or specialized treatment to experimental treatment. It is critical to understand what kind of doctor you are seeing to understand the information and treatment they are offering. For example, a doctor or facility that only offers standard treatment may not be the best source for information on experimental treatment. Similarly, a surgeon may not be the best source for information on other treatments like chemotherapy or radiation. The various perspectives and specialties of different doctors necessitate getting a second opinion.

Summary

Being a newly diagnosed cancer patient can be an overwhelming experience. Once the initial shock has passed, take time to understand the treatment process and define your disease to rectify any misconceptions. Then, explore your expectations of treatment. Finally, as a newly diagnosed patient, acknowledge your responsibility and clearly define your medical team’s role to avoid costly assumptions. Once you have gone through these steps of a new diagnosis, you are ready to explore your treatment options and find the best treatment strategy for you.

Information presented in The Daily Tip is offered as a guide to augment a patient’s research of cancer and treatment and does not replace the advice of a doctor. For more information on a specific cancer, go to www.CancerConsultants.com, www.cancer.gov, and consult your physician.