Clinical trials offer new, experimental treatments. Sometimes, if there are no more known treatments and you want to continue trying, you can join a clinical trial. Fighting the cancer may no longer be the best thing for you. Ask your doctor to explain the risks and benefits of any treatment. And you need to know if more treatment for cancer will help you live longer. No one can know exactly, but your doctor should be able to tell you a range of months or years. Ask about your prognosis, or how long you have to live. Ask your doctor about the stage of your cancer and how much it has spread. You need to understand how advanced your cancer is. Your doctor should give you clear answers to any questions you ask. It can be hard for both the patient and the doctor to talk about stopping treatment for the cancer and focus on end-of-life care. They end up suffering when they should not have to. Still, almost half of people with advanced cancer keep getting chemotherapy-even when it has almost no chance of helping them. Instead, more treatment could cause serious side effects that shorten your life and reduce the quality of the time you have left. If you have had three different treatments and your cancer has grown or spread, more treatment usually will not help you feel better or increase your chance of living longer. When is it time to think about stopping cancer treatment? They have found that treatment after treatment offers little or no benefit. Doctors know a lot about how these cancers grow or shrink over time and how they respond to treatment. This is especially true for solid-tumor cancers, like breast, colon, and lung cancer, and sarcoma. But if your tumor keeps growing, even with treatment, there is a lower chance that more treatment will help. When you treat a tumor for the first time, there is hope that the treatment will destroy the cancer cells and keep them from returning. You can use this information to talk with your doctor about your options and choose the best care for you.Ĭancer responds best to treatment the first time.
#Hopefully you feel better how to
The following explains how to know when it is time to stop treatment and focus on end-of-life care. Instead, you could focus on getting care to keep you comfortable and out of pain. It is hard to accept, but the best thing for you at that point may be to stop the cancer treatment. Sometimes, even with the best care, cancer continues to spread. When you have cancer and you have tried many treatments without success, it’s hard to know when to stop treatment.
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