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Mini Review Volume 9 Issue 3
The new path of the oncology
Sabrina Chagas
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Professor of Clinical Oncology at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC- Rio), Brazil
Correspondence: Sabrina Chagas, Professor of Clinical Oncology at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC- Rio), Brazil
Received: December 26, 2017 | Published: June 21, 2018
Citation: Chagas S. The new path of the oncology. J Cancer Prev Curr Res. 2018;9(3):150. DOI: 10.15406/jcpcr.2018.09.00339
Mini review
How are we doing?
In 2015, I wrote a book, and 1,500 books were sold in less than two months. Another thousand books have already been printed for a second edition.
The story? Well, here we go:
My father is a mastologist. I'm an oncologist. My main area of expertise is breast cancer. And I lived the other side of it! My father had breast cancer in 2015. He had mastectomy followed by chemotherapy. Four cycles of taxotere with cyclophosphamide. It had been endless months. An endless routine of side effects so much known to me in my daily professional life.
First, I suffered from having the diagnosis in my hands. Fear dominates us in an irrational way. Knowing all the outcome options for each different stage of the disease is a massacre with all possible logic within the disease.
Then I lived the endless hours in the surgery, waiting for the assessment of tumor size and sentinel lymph node status. I then went through the anguish of waiting for the histopathological report. Common routine in my clinic with my patients. Always looking so calmly. We judge their excessive anxiety so often. And what was not the surprise of seeing me like this, extremely anxious for the medical report.
And when we chose chemotherapy, I had to go through all the ups and downs that treatment gives us. So many side effects. All those we often think we are controlling with some medicine. But the patient continues with symptoms for a period, without often reporting the intensity. Because they don't want to disturb their doctor or simply prefer the stillness of silence. My father did this. Our patients do that.
It was a huge learning experience. Usually when the patient is in the middle of the cycle, his symptoms are very intense. Many talk about preferring to stop the treatment or even prefer to die to feel these symptoms. But when time passes, and we arrive on the twenty-first day for a new cycle, little is said of everything that has passed. After all, the treatment must go on.
Which was not the surprise in 2017, when arriving at ASCO and attending the plenary session about a scientific publication regarding the importance of intercepting patients early in search of these symptoms. This behavior changed the history of these patients! This behavior, increased the survival!
The name of my book? "How are we doing?". Because the fight is not just of the patient. It's ours, as doctors as well. We must be together and attentive all the time. Arriving at ASCO 2017 I realized that we are already waking up for this. That's the way.
Acknowledgements
None.
Conflict of interest
Author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
©2018 Chagas. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.