How Much Does Cancer Affect People
Almost everyone knows someone who has or had cancer. Every year about 1.8 million people are diagnosed with cancer. There are over 100 different types of cancer but the most common include, breast cancer, prostate cancer, basal cell cancer, melanoma, colon cancer, lung cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma. Cancer is so scary because it can take someone away from you so fast if they don’t get the right treatment. It is predicted that about 600,000 people will die from cancer each year. Cancer can come upon anyone at any moment, you could be born with it, or you could get cancer further into your life.
Treatments vary according to the type of cancer you are diagnosed with. There are over 100 different chemotherapy drugs. They have side effects ranging from weakness, vomiting, diarrhea, hair loss, losing fingernails, sores in the mouth, and generalized weakness. At times it is not necessarily the cancer that kills you but the effects of the treatment. Radiation is also a type of treatment for cancer. This is done to specific mapped out areas and then zapped with extremely high doses of radiation that cause permanent damage to the area at which it is targeted. The radiation treatment itself is painless but it can burn your skin. As stated in The Wall Street Journal, the death rate of lung cancer and melanoma has decreased by 2.2% from 2016 to 2017. That was the largest cancer decline ever recorded. The total death rate of cancer has decreased by 29% since 1991, which is extremely good.
Cancer sucks! Cancer is not only difficult for the person who has it but also for their family. If it is a mother with a husband and children, how children do not understand what is happening to their parent and the fear of seeing them get sick. How the husband would be sad seeing the love of his life sick, weak and in pain or even worse dying. The loss you experience is indescribable. Someone can be healthy one day and then boom, your life is changed forever. No matter what age, losing a grandparent, parent, child, it is all so hard. It is hard to believe with all the medical advances they do not have a cure but one thing is for sure, treatments have advanced significantly. The new technology has improved in finding result of better medication and new treatments.
https://www.aicr.org/cancer-research-update/2019/01-23/a-remarkable-year-of-progress-in-cancer-prevention-research.html