The First Step Understand Your Cancer Diagnosis And Treatment Second Opinion In Cancer

The First Step Understand Your Diagnosis

Your number one priority following a cancer diagnosis is to put in place the best-integrated cancer care program you can possibly design.

This is much more than simply going to one doctor and saying, “Treat me.”

The decisions you make regarding your cancer care and recovery program are some of the most important you will make in your entire life.

Read And Learn More: Cancer Essential Things To Do A Road Map For All Cancer Patients Treatment Diagnosis

Begin the journey through cancer by following this course of action, which has proven highly effective for hundreds of thousands of cancer survivors.

Stop “Awfulizing”

• You’ve been told, “It’s cancer.” I have deep compassion for you. I fully appreciate your feelings. I’ve been there, too.
• First, you’re in shock and filled with fear. The next moment you’re angry but not quite certain at what or whom.
• Then comes the thought of, “How did this happen? Why me?” Even the guilt starts to creep in, “Did I bring this on myself?” Plus all the questions have started to rush through your mind: “Will I die?” “How long do I have?” “What will happen to my family?” And on and on and on. Your mind is overwhelmed at times.
• Be calm. Try not to panic. I know that this is easier said than done. But be aware that panic will only inhibit rational and positive action.
• Cancer is a serious illness, but it is not necessarily fatal. You do have the luxury of some time. Unlike a severed artery, cancer does not require you to do something this very instant.
• A hurried response, based in the emotions of fear and panic, is neither required nor preferred. In fact, a hurried response may be harmful. Don’t take that as a license for inaction, however.
• Stop and examine your frenzied thoughts for just a moment. It is at the beginning stages of this journey that clear decision-making will be most important. With these early decisions, you will ensure that your illness is properly treated. Panic acts only to your detriment.
• Panic is a mental phenomenon, a response to our beliefs about cancer being frightful and overpowering. The process can accurately be labeled as “awfulizing.” Isn’t that an apt description? When we awfulize, we mentally take our current situation to its worst possible conclusion.

If we objectively observe our emotions for just a moment, we will see something different from initial appearances.

• The intense panic that virtually every cancer patient experiences is actually the mind projecting its fears about the unknown future. Think about it, and understand this truth: Panic is caused by the mind. It’s an assumption. It is not based on material fact.
• Our fear-filled thoughts do not necessarily determine our future. We have a choice. This is a profound healing insight.
• What to do when you start to feel anxious emotions arising inside? Try to witness them. Just observe. You may want to give those emotions an image. View them, and yourself, in your mind’s eye.
• Instead of putting yourself in the role of a victim who is hopelessly caught in a web of panic and despair, become the observer. By not engaging the mind in battle, by simply watching the emotions and letting go, your panic will soon subside.
• For example, Gwen Clement said she gave her fears a name. She would catch herself becoming anxious and say, “Hey, Mr. Fear. What are you doing here? Get out of my life.” Then she would replace that fear with a short prayer of gratitude. “Thank you, God, for giving me a long life.”

I encourage you to do the same, to develop your version of speaking to your fears, to literally tell them to go away.

Then always end by imagining yourself as a victor. Give yourself an image of a competent and confident person who is about to make some very important choices. Clear decision-making can and will be yours.

An Essential Thing to Do

Sit down. Take a deep breath. Say out loud, “Cancer does not mean death.” Observe your emotions. Detach by separating who you are as a person from the emotional panic you may be feeling. You are not uncontrolled fear even though you may be experiencing fear. Understand that difference. Then immediately read and act on the next two essential things to do.

Take Charge

Who is the most important person on your cancer recovery team? Some people believe it is their surgeon. Others believe it is their I oncologist. Some choose the medical or diagnostic technicians, others the nurses, and still others choose their spouse.

• But the most important person on your cancer recovery team is you! You are the one who is ill. It is you who must work to get well ‘ again. You are the character of central importance. And you need to put yourself in charge.
• Millions of cancer patients surrender leadership of their recovery program way too often and way too willingly. Elizabeth Smalley, a thirty-eight-year-old housewife, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
• Her treatment was not progressing as expected, and the side effects depleted her. It all left Elizabeth understandably discouraged. Her doctor kept assuring her, “We’re doing all we can. Trust me.”
• Following an especially difficult week, Elizabeth asked herself, “Do I accept the course of this treatment or do I try something new?” She called and made an appointment at a comprehensive cancer center that was a four-hour drive from her home. Doctors there recommended a different treatment program.
• Elizabeth took back that recommendation to her home doctor for implementation. “Personally taking charge was my turning point,” explained a healthy Elizabeth four years after her bold and assertive decision.
• Survivors take charge. View yourself as the manager of a baseball team or whatever organizational analogy you like. This is your cancer recovery team. The team’s mission is to get you well again.
• You’ll want a strong starting pitcher; many times that is a nutritionist or an oncologist. And you’ll need many other team members: a catcher, infielders, outfielders. Equate these with specialists. You, the manager, choose the team that is on the field at any given moment.
• Traditionally, consumers play a passive role in the healthcare system, going along with virtually whatever doctors and allied healthcare professionals recommend. We’re encouraged to consent. Is that why we’re called “patients”? This passive attitude does not serve you well. Decide you will take charge now!

An Essential Thing to Do

Evaluate your team. Who are the players? Who is managing this team? Is it a one-person show? How many more people could be helping? Are the team members working for you? Do some seem to be working against you? One woman remarked, “Every time I go to the doctor, I feel like I am in enemy territory.” If you feel that way, you need to make a substitution. Remember: You are in charge!

Ask Your Doctor These Questions

It is critically important for you to clearly understand your cancer diagnosis and proposed treatment plan. An important part of managing your care is knowing what questions to ask your doctor. Here are some examples of the types of questions you will want to ask your doctor:

Cancer Overview:

• Precisely what type of cancer do I have?
• Where exactly is it located?
• What are my risks if I do not treat this disease?
• Is this type of cancer caused by genetic factors? Are other members of my family at risk?

Cancer Symptoms:

• What are the most common symptoms of this type of cancer?
• Is there anything that can be done to make my symptoms or side effects better?
• Are there activities that may make them worse?
• If new symptoms or side effects arise or existing ones worsen, what should I do?

Cancer Diagnosis:

• What diagnostic tests have you performed? What further tests are necessary?
• What information will these tests tell us?
• How can I prepare myself for each test or procedure?
• Where do I need to go to have these tests?
• When will I get the results? How will the results be communicated to me?
• Will you explain, in patient-friendly language, the pathology report to me?
• Is there any indication a second pathology report is necessary?
• If I seek a second opinion, will I have to repeat any tests or procedures?

Cancer Staging:

• What is the stage of my cancer? In patient-friendly language, what does this mean?
• Has cancer spread to my lymph nodes or anywhere else?
• How is staging used to determine my cancer treatment?

Cancer Treatment:

• What are my treatment options?
• Which treatments, or combination of treatments, do you recommend? Why?
• What is the goal of the treatment plan you are recommending?
• Who will be part of my treatment team? What does each member do?
• How much experience do you and the treatment team have treating this type of cancer?
• Will I need to be hospitalized for treatment or is this treatment done in an outpatient setting?
• What is the expected timeline for my treatment plan?
• How will this treatment affect my daily life? Will I be able to work, exercise, and perform my usual activities?
• What are the short-term side effects of this cancer treatment?
• What long-term side effects may be associated with this cancer treatment?

Cancer Support:

• What support services are available to me? And to my family?
• Whom should I call with questions or concerns during nonbusiness hours?
• May I contact you or the nurse to talk about additional information I find?
• Who handles health insurance concerns in your office?

Cancer Follow-up care:

• What follow-up tests will I need? How often will I need them?
• As a cancer patient you are a consumer. The decision process regarding who will prescribe and administer your treatment is not that much different from any other major purchase.
• But the consequences of your decisions are radically different from those involved in buying an automobile, for example.
• You have the right, even the responsibility, to ask questions of your doctor just as you would with any consumer purchase.
• Evaluate those answers more closely than any major purchase you have ever made. Your options and choices for the best treatment will then become clearer.
• Cancer survivors are consumer activists. They ask. Become an activist!

An Essential Thing to Do

Obtain answers to the preceding questions today! Record the answers in your Wellness and Recovery Journal. Ask the same questions again at the time you obtain your second opinion.

Get a Second Opinion

Obtain a second opinion from a board-certified oncologist, or cancer specialist. This is a critically important step that is not to be t overlooked. If at all possible, the second opinion should be completed prior to starting any treatment program.

• Whom you consult is also critically important. Second opinions should come from a multidisciplinary team. Typically you will want to speak to a surgeon, a radiation oncologist, and a medical oncologist. Why? Each will look at your case through his or her own training and experience. A radiation oncologist will typically say, “Radiation.” A medical oncologist will typically say, “Chemotherapy.” Let each of the oncologists know you will be talking to the other specialist. This knowledge alone will act as another checkpoint of control.
• Additionally, the second opinion doctors need to be independent of each other as well as not in a working partnership, formal or informal, with the doctor who made the initial diagnosis. Look for different hospital and medical group affiliations. Many people travel to major cancer centers to obtain them. Second opinion consultations are that important.
• Do not be fearful that a request for a second opinion might alienate your doctor. Second opinion consultations are standard procedure; your doctor makes such referrals every day. Ask the doctor who made the initial diagnosis, or a member of the staff, for a complete transcript of your medical records. Then take the records with you, or have them sent ahead. I prefer to personally hand the records to the consulting staff. It eliminates the chance of lost pages and delays.
• The cost of obtaining at least one second opinion is reimbursed by virtually all insurance programs. Even if you’re not covered, get the second opinion. Don’t let cost stand in the way of obtaining some of the most important advice of your life.
• “I had a second opinion all right,” explained Katherine Ger hardt, a fifty-five-year-old insurance office manager and grandmother, describing her experience with breast cancer. “The second | opinion came from another surgeon who shared offices with the | first. They both said “radical” (mastectomy) was the way to go. And to this day I wonder if I would have been better off with a lumpectomy and radiation.”
• Katherine’s second opinion experience could have been improved in two ways. First, she would have been better served by consulting with an oncologist. These specialists diagnose and treat cancer every working day. They can be expected to have the most up-to-date information on treatment options for each type and stage of cancer. Both surgeons Katherine consulted were general surgeons who dealt with a variety of illnesses, not just cancer.

Second, Katherine would have been better served by consulting with a second opinion doctor not associated with the first. Her surgeons were located in the same building and just down the hall from her family doctor.

These associations are a little-discussed but potentially important issue to patients. Doctors who are friends, office mates, business associates, or in a junior position within a medical practice may find it difficult to challenge the diagnoses or recommended 1 treatment programs of associates.

All sorts of relationships exist that may influence decisions. “We were in the middle of renegotiating the lease,” said Robert, a young oncologist who rented office space from another oncologist. “We were meeting that very afternoon to discuss rents. I didn’t want to offend my landlord when he sent me a patient for a second opinion consultation.

So I just agreed with his treatment recommendations.”

• That experience may seem improbable, but the story is unfortunately true. The best safeguard is to seek second opinions from board-certified oncologists with different specialties, who are affiliated with different practices, at different hospitals, and perhaps even live in different cities.
• It puzzles me why so many cancer patients are fearful of asking for a second opinion. When I have inquired, the typical response is, “No one told me to ask,” or, “I don’t want to offend my doctor.”
• Obtaining a second opinion in no way implies that the initial diagnosis is incorrect, that the suggested treatment is inappropriate, or that you lack confidence in the physician. On a subject as important as this, you simply deserve to have the benefit of more than one person’s thinking.
• Your second opinion search also puts you in touch with other doctors, giving you options and helping you decide which medical team will actually administer your treatment program.
• John was a sixty-two-year-old accountant diagnosed with colon cancer. His primary care doctor suggested John consult with a surgeon. The day John’s second set of test results came back from the lab, the surgeon called John, confirmed the initial diagnosis, and said, “I’ve scheduled you for surgery. Be at the hospital by six-thirty tomorrow morning.”
• Fortunately, John had the courage to say “slow down” and went about obtaining another second opinion consultation from a board-certified medical oncologist.
• The second-opinion oncologist independently confirmed the initial diagnosis. In fact, he also recommended surgery, just as John was initially advised.

John returned to his surgeon only to be greeted with sarcasm: “I told you so. What’s the matter? Didn’t you trust me?” John walked out of that doctor’s office, found another surgeon, and today is in excellent health.

The lessons: Second opinions are critical. And you do not have to accept intimidation or arrogance.

An Essential Thing to Do

Make your second opinion appointment today. This is one of the most important things you can do. Do not overlook this step. Act now! Pick up the phone. Make the appointment.

Become an E-Patient

Turn to the Internet to research your diagnosis, understand all your treatment options, and connect with other patients similarly diagnosed. Here’s a handful of the best resources:

Cancer Recovery Foundation. The award-winning resource for integrated cancer care. Helps you mobilize body, mind, and spirit to get well and stay well. Analysis of conventional, complementary, and alternative treatment options. Extensive nutritional guidance. Suggested exercise regimens.

• Attitude builders. Support, both individual and groups, online and via telephone. Spiritually inclusive.
• The top medically based cancer Website. Managed by the University of Pennsylvania, this site provides clinical information in understandable language.
• Comprehensive information about all the specific types of cancers, their conventional treatment options, and research news.
• National Cancer Institute, www.cancer.gov. If you are the type of patient who wants and needs technical and medically focused information, this is your source.
• Here you will find extensive cancer statistics plus information on virtually all cancer diagnoses, conventional treatment options, genetics, clinical trials, and ongoing research.
• Mayo Clinic, www.mayoclinic.com. The world-famous Mayo Clinic has an excellent Website for both patients and healthcare professionals.

Under their “Health Information” tab, click “Diseases and Conditions” followed by “Cancer.” The site’s information is offered in patient-friendly language.

• Cancer Treatment Centers of America. www.cancercenter. com. When it comes to actual treatment, this site gives patients a multitude of options that few others do. I recommend you visit this Website and contact this organization to determine if their services seem right for you.
• Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, www.dartmouthatlas.org. The Dartmouth Atlas Project documents variations in how medical resources are distributed and used in the United States.
• The project uses Medicare data to provide information and analysis about national, regional, and local markets, as well as hospitals and their affiliated physicians.
• Use this site to determine where your hospital and physician ranks compared to best-practice standards.
• HealthGrades. www.healthgrades.com. This Website rates doctors and hospitals providing today’s best transparent, data-driven outcomes to the public. Visit this site to become informed about the healthcare quality your current team delivers as well as understand provider options in your area.

Breast Cancer Charities of America. www.thebreastcancer charities.org. Cancer Recovery Foundation’s affiliate organization devoted to teaching breast cancer prevention to all women and integrated cancer care to those fighting breast cancer.

Rapid online evolution of cancer information has allowed us as informed healthcare consumers to become much more sophisticated in the kinds of information we can access. There is a plethora of cancer information on the Web. I encourage you to spend time on these sites in order to school yourself on your own cancer diagnosis and treatment.

An Essential Thing to Do

Do the research. Hold yourself accountable for gaining a working knowledge of your diagnosis and all your treatment options.

Rethink the Statistics

As you conduct your research into treatment options, you will invariably discover cancer recovery statistics that detail cancer incidence, mortality, and five-year survival rates. Do not let these statistics paralyze you.

Statistics measure populations. They can be interpreted in a great many ways. But statistics do not determine any individual case, including yours.

• Let’s look squarely at the facts about cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute’s SEER studies, anyone can develop cancer. However, the risk of being diagnosed increases with age. Nearly 80 percent of cancers are diagnosed in people fifty- five years of age and older. Approximately one in two men and one in three women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.
• Lifestyle choices have an immensely powerful impact on the risk of being diagnosed with cancer. For example, a male smoker’s risk of developing lung cancer is approximately twenty-five times greater than that of a nonsmoker. Genetic factors impact only about 5 percent of cancers.
• For example, a woman whose mother, sister, or daughter had breast cancer is approximately twice as likely to be diagnosed as someone who does not have this family history. These inherited genetics pale in comparison to damaged genetics caused by external factors such as tobacco, alcohol, environmental toxins, and too much exposure to sunlight, as well as internal factors such as overuse of hormones and poor nutrition.
• Unfortunately, approximately 1.6 million new cancer diagnoses will be made this year in the United States and approximately 600,000 people will die from cancer. The good news is that nearly 12 million Americans have received a cancer diagnosis and have survived. You can be one of those people.
• Your response to these statistics is critical. Realize that statistics measure populations. They can be interpreted in a great many ways. But statistics do not determine any individual case, including yours.
• Just after my second surgery, I received a booklet filled with numerical tables, statistics, and graphs on all types of cancers. Of course I felt compelled to read all the information on lung cancer. The numbers on metastatic lung cancer were not promising. As I reflected on what I read, I felt frightened, depressed, and filled with despair, certain of my fast-approaching death.
• Several days later I looked again at those statistics and realized that many people do survive. “What did the survivors do?” I wondered. “How can I learn from them?”

No matter how difficult your situation, realize that there is no type of cancer that does not have some rate of survival. This is a significant fact, and it is cause for reasonable hope. The question now becomes, “What can I do to maximize my chances of getting on the right side of these statistics?” With this book you have already begun to tap into the answers.

An Essential Thing to Do

Interpret statistics as indications of progress. Determine to act with the conviction that you will be counted among the “survivor statistics.”