Your Lung Cancer: Your Goals
Key Points:
- When making treatment goals it important to ask yourself two questions:
- What do I want out of treatment?
- Is this a realistic goal to have with my type of lung cancer?
- You will work with your care team to decide if the goal of treatment should be:
- Curing your cancer
- Controlling your cancer
- Being comfortable
- Cure. Of course every doctor, patient and caregiver hopes that treatment will get rid of the cancer completely. For some patients this is a more realistic goal than for others. It depends on your profile—the type and stage of your cancer and what treatment options you are eligible for. When a cure is your goal, you may be willing to endure more intense side effects in return for the chance at a cure.
- Control. Sometimes when your cancer is at a later stage or previous treatments have been unsuccessful, your treatment goal might change to controlling your cancer. This might mean choosing treatments that try to shrink or stop your cancer from growing. If this is your goal, you might not want to choose harsher treatments and the side effects they may cause.
- Comfort. It is not abnormal to think that you want to do everything possible to “fight” this cancer. If you have an advanced stage cancer or one that hasn't responded to treatments, you might consider treatment that allows you to be comfortable and enjoy your life, instead of treatment that will continue to address the cancer but might make you suffer. You and your doctor will work together to make sure you are free of symptoms and able to live your life.
The goals listed above are broad treatment goals. Sometimes your goals are much more short-term and specific. Maybe you want to feel well enough to attend a family event or maybe you want to make sure you can be with your family and friends during a holiday. Lung cancer treatment is not perfect, but often times doctors and nurses can adapt the delivery of your treatment to meet your short-term and long-term goals.
When discussing your goals with your doctors and family members is it inevitable for the conversation to turn to prognosis. You may wonder,
Q: “What is my chance of cure?”, “Will I die?” and “How long do I have?”
A: Your doctor can't predict the future. Every person is different. An estimate is possible based on the experiences of other people with the same cancer. Doctors use cancer survival rates or survival statistics to tell you the percentage of people who survive a certain type and stage of cancer for a specific amount of time.
It is important to remember that cancer survival rates are not based on specifics about you. They do not take into account any of your personal characteristics. They are based on the rates of hundreds or thousands of different people. You are not a statistic. Statistics may be helpful in providing general information but they cannot predict what will happen to you.
It is easy to spend a lot of time thinking about the “what ifs.” Many doctors and nurses recommend not getting too hung up on prognosis. It is better to conserve your energy and focus on your treatment by taking one day at a time.
One of the best ways you can prepare for treatment is to get healthy.
The healthier you are before treatment, the easier it will be to recover. If you smoke, the time to quite is NOW. Check out the American Lung Association’s resources on how to quit smoking here!
