I watched a video where somebody said that there is no better time to get cancer than 2026 . I know what you're thinking; cancer is a terrible situation to find yourself in, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. What they meant is that today you have more options for treatment and prolonging your life than ever, and research keeps coming up with new breakthroughs. Science has invested a lot of time and money in cancer treatments, and those discoveries are later applied in treatment after clinical trials. For instance, as I was going through chemotherapy and preparing for radiotherapy, I did some digging about the regimen that had been proposed, and I discovered that a paper had been presented a mere days before at a conference about its efficacy. That helped answer some of my questions. This means the work never ends and there is hope.
So you may ask what the options are. By the way, the final decision lies with the patient, and every case is different, and whatever course is taken is personal. Some may even decide to do nothing, and that is a valid choice too. What I have seen is in no way exhaustive, and an oncologist is the first place to go to find out what to do. One of the ways I learnt was from videos playing while I was in the waiting room, and I've embedded them.
One important question before embarking on a course of treatment is to ask whether it is Curative or palliative. Curative means eliminating the disease from your body, while palliative means they will do their best to prolong life and improve quality as the disease persists.
So here, in no particular order, is what is available today.
Cut it Out
The obvious thing when a tumour is involved is to cut it out surgically. This is particularly for solid tumors which are not adjacent to critical organs. Numerous cancers are primarily dealt with in this way. However, the tumour may need to be shrunk before surgery or prepared for it; then chemotherapy is administered, and that can also be done after, which is referred to as adjuvant chemotherapy.
Poison it!
Calling it poisoning is a simplification because it's more complicated than that. Chemicals are introduced into the body to stop the cancer. This is called chemotherapy.Chemotherapy can be given in a variety of ways such as injections into the muscles, skin, artery, or vein, or it can be taken by mouth in the form of a pill. Chemotherapy drugs interfere with cell division in various possible ways, e.g. with the duplication of DNA or the separation of newly formed chromosomes. They target fast-growing cells like tumuor cells, but unfortunately they are not alone, and other tissues and organs in the body like hair follicles, bone marrow, and digestive linings are affected. The drugs sweep everything and end up with a litany of side effects, and mitigating medicines are usually given in combination. Today, the understanding is much better than previously and the treatments are not as harsh as they used to be.
Chemo as it's usually called, is the most common treatment you'll hear about, and there are numerous drugs used tailored to the disease. It was initially used after it was discovered that mustard gas, which is a chemical weapon, had an effect on cancer cells.
Burn it!
Another discovery that was made from war is that radiation that destroys the DNA in cells can also be used to destroy cancer cells.
Radiation therapy (radiotherapy) is the use of ionizing radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors by damaging their DNA, causing cellular death. Radiation therapy can either damage DNA directly or create charged particles (free radicals) within the cells that can in turn damage the DNA. Radiation therapy can be administered externally via external beam radiotherapy or internally via brachytherapy. The effects of radiation therapy are localised and confined to the region being treated. Although radiation damages both cancer cells and normal cells, most normal cells can recover from the effects of radiation and function properly. The goal of radiation therapy is to damage as many cancer cells as possible, while limiting harm to nearby healthy tissue. Hence, it is given in many fractions, meaning smaller daily doses, allowing healthy tissue to recover between fractions.
Radiation therapy may be used to treat almost every type of solid tumor, and may also be used to treat leukemia and lymphoma. The radiation dose to each site depends on a number of factors, including the radio sensitivity of each cancer type and whether there are tissues and organs nearby that may be damaged by radiation. Thus, as with every form of treatment, radiation therapy is not without its side effects. For instance, dry mouth due to damage to salivary glands.
Boost your system!
Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that helps your immune system fight cancer. The immune system helps your body fight infections and other diseases. It is made up of white blood cells and organs and tissues of the lymph system.
Immunotherapy is a type of biological therapy. Biological therapy is a type of treatment that uses substances made from living organisms to treat cancer.
Precision Strikes!
Targeted therapy is a type of cancer treatment that targets proteins that control how cancer cells grow, divide, and spread. It is the foundation of precision medicine. As researchers learn more about the DNA changes and proteins that drive cancer, they are better able to design treatments that target these proteins.
What are the types of targeted therapy?
Most targeted therapies are either small-molecule drugs or monoclonal antibodies.
Small-molecule drugs are small enough to enter cells easily, so they are used for targets that are inside cells.
Monoclonal antibodies, also known as therapeutic antibodies, are proteins produced in the lab. These proteins are designed to attach to specific targets found on cancer cells. Some monoclonal antibodies mark cancer cells so that they will be better seen and destroyed by the immune system. Other monoclonal antibodies directly stop cancer cells from growing or cause them to self-destruct. Still others carry toxins to cancer cells.
Hormonal Therapy
The growth of some cancers can be inhibited by providing or blocking certain hormones. Common examples of hormone-sensitive tumors include certain types of breast and prostate cancers. Blocking estrogen or testosterone is often an important additional treatment. In certain cancers, administration of hormone agonists, such as progestogens may be therapeutically beneficial. Although the side effects from hormone therapy vary depending on the type, patients can experience symptoms such as hot flashes, nausea, and fatigue.
Like I said earlier the list is not exhaustive and there are others such as
Stem cell transplants are procedures that restore blood stem cells in people who have had theirs destroyed by the high doses of chemotherapy or radiation therapy that are used to treat certain cancers, blood disorders, and autoimmune disorders.
Blood-forming stem cells are vital because they grow into different types of blood cells. The main types of blood cells are:
white blood cells, which are part of your immune system and help your body fight infection
red blood cells, which carry oxygen throughout your body
platelets, which help the blood clot and prevent bleeding
CAR T-Cell Therapy
CAR T-cell therapy is an advanced immunotherapy that genetically reprograms a patient's own immune cells to find and destroy cancer cells. Key steps include collecting T cells, modifying them in a lab to add chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), and infusing the engineered cells back into the patient
Some may be asking what about natural remedies? Research on those is also ongoing, and many drugs have come about from extracting the active ingredients in them. Also, a word of caution is that cancer cells dying in a lab are not the same as treating cancer in the human body, and that requires a rigorous process with clinical trials.
In conclusion, there are new and innovative treatments emerging every day, which gives more hope and better outcomes.
