Cancer: today the conversation is personal.
Today, February 4th, is World Cancer Day. The date, very personal pour moi, makes my soul tickle.
The numbers are repeated over and over again: 1 in 3 people will have cancer in their lifetime; 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.
I won the lottery. In this one, at least. Four years ago, during a routine exam, they discovered a part of my chest that didn’t have to be there. Or had?
It was followed by the whole journey already (also exhaustively) portrayed in film/novela/series: 6 long months of chemotherapy, in which I left much more than my long hair behind; radiotherapy, aka chest roasting, which left me a legacy of tattoos of dots on the chest, used to synchronize the rays of the machine, and which at the time left me #excited because they looked like pimples on my cleavage.
O-heavens, o-drama, o-life.
Since then, I have also drugged myself with pills and injections of the person, to, according to the protocol, decrease my chance of winning the lottery again, with an even greater prize: metastasis, a chilling word for any cancer patient in remission or , frankly, for any human being on planetzul.
(ps. this one of the photos above is just me on the coast of Tamarit, Spain, right after completing the chemotherapy cycles)
Since 2017, I’ve met a lot of people with similar, different, different journeys. In support groups, scientific journeys, accidental corners. Some very old and some so young. Some are no longer here.
Others, lucky ones – and not warriors, as the media likes to call it, because, alive or dead, we all went to combat, poha –, seek to remake their lives and walk side by side with the ubiquitous (and, in my view, healthy) reminder about A Finitude De Tudo y Tutti.
My scars are here, dynamic and flying wings, in the pectoral and astral realms. Not without pride, that the journey was/is lôka, compañeros. Nenon?
***
It is estimated that at least 100 million cancer screening tests were canceled in Europe due to the arrival of the coronavirus in 2020.
That would translate to at least 1 million undiagnosed cases over the first year of the pandemic.
There is much to improve. Diagnostic systems, access to the healthcare system, the improvement of treatments and research related to sensitive fronts such as personalized immunotherapies and therapeutic approaches for metastatic cancer.
According to the European Union’s Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Cypriot Stella Kyriakides, the continent is still accounting for the burden of the pandemic within the context of cancer. She explains, for example, that 1 in 5 patients with the disease “continues without receiving surgical treatment or chemotherapy (…) due to the saturation of the health systems”.
“Due to the pandemic, we have an estimated 1 million undiagnosed cancer cases, which means that 1 million people could receive their diagnosis late, which is likely to affect their prognosis, their treatment possibilities and their quality of life.” says.
As I always say, people. Vaccination, prevention and mask are not just for fighting the “little flu”. The pandemic and full hospitals affect everything.
***
With my oncologist, this week, we discussed whether or not to continue with one of the medications, which had been giving me depression, fatigue and other paranauzes (they are anti-estrogenic drugs or, as my doctor says, “castrators” – you can imagine…).
We looked at my mammaprint together — a genomic study that indicates the (high, in my case) probability of cancer coming back — and related studies. “For very young patients like you” (of course, just for the cancer phonological statistics I’m super xovemmm), she says, “there are benefits.”
“How much are we talking about, doc?” -I’ve gotten used to talking to the onco as if it were a mafia movie.
— Studies indicate approximately 3% more protection over the first five years post-cancer.
— Go for it.
Three. Per. one hundred It might not look like anything. But those who have lived, those who know, know that any shavings from a pan will do.
Is it a high price for very little? Medicine, I want to believe, will continue to advance even more and make us more and more numerous, happy and healthy survivors, as has been happening in recent decades.
Three. Per. one hundred
Ah, correction: I didn’t win the lottery once, but twice. The second: rebirth.
Miss, miss: may each day of this vast-life have importance and reverberation in your spirit. Not just the 4th of February or some happy day. That, on any corner, lotteries, scars, beauties, finitudes await us…
Source: Folha
