Essay On Chemotherapy

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Chemotherapy Imagine what the world would be like if chemotherapy did not exist. Millions of people are diagnosed with cancer each year. If chemotherapy had not been invented the medical field would be much different. Patients diagnosed would have shorter lives and their lives would be much more uncomfortable. Without chemotherapy treatment the mortality rate of cancer patients would be much higher. While people know about the effectiveness and side effects of chemotherapy, they may not know how important chemotherapy really is to the treatment of cancer. Chemotherapy allows patients a better opportunity to live longer with less pain, despite its many side effects. The purpose of chemotherapy is to attack cancer cells. However, …show more content…
During the early part of the nineteenth century, a common equation was cancer equals death. Even when people had symptoms, they were hesitant to go to the doctor because they thought there was nothing that doctors could do anyways. Many people were reluctant to share information about a family member or themselves having cancer because they felt like they would be considered outliers. They felt as though it would bring their families disgrace in future generations. Some physicians even thought that the patient would commit suicide when they were told that they had cancer. Cancer was actually known as “the big C” because it helped people avoid using the word cancer (Holleb, 1986).
Cancers definition is;
Cancer is not just one disease, but a large group of almost 100 diseases. It is a genetic disease, with two main characteristics of uncontrolled growth of the cells in the human body and the ability of those cells to migrate from the original site and spread to distant sites (Dupler & Odle, 2005).
Some other common cancer terms are the following; remission is the disappearance of cancerous cells (Burtner, 2000). Another common term is carcinogen, which is a cancer causing substance (Richards, 1972). Biopsy is a term used to describe a test used to find cancer (Burtner, 2000). A final term is prognosis which is a prediction an oncologist makes about a patients cancer (Richards, 1972). An oncologist is a cancer

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