Welcome to the age of cancer rehab
Doctors are finally wising up and realizing that the effects of disease don't stop when treatment does
By Mary Elizabeth WilliamsTopics: Cancer, Wall Street Journal, healthcare, Chemotherapy, Life News
We talk about preventing cancer. We talk about treating cancer. And we talk, endlessly, about “the cure.” Yet what is rarely addressed in all of our conversations about cancer is what happens after cancer. As a Wall Street Journal story this week explains, cancer, for all the damn attention we give it, is in many ways a still vastly ignored and underestimated experience. That’s why a new movement in medicine is afoot, with the goal of helping patients deal with the side effects and long-term physical and emotional aftereffects as they transition back to health. Commission on Cancer Chairman Dan McKellar calls this next step “an absolutely essential part of cancer care.” Call it cancer rehab — a notion that’s been far too long a time in coming.
The ways we respond to our cancers are even more varied than the myriad kinds of cancers themselves. For some of us, it’s an easy operation and brief recovery. For others, it’s years of invasive operations and debilitating treatments like interferon. It can be a kick in the butt that doesn’t stop kicking. It can mean lost energy and lost sex drive and lost appetite and wondering what the hell is wrong. A recent National Cancer Institute study found that “more than a third of the nation’s 12.6 million cancer survivors have had physical or mental health problems that put their overall health in jeopardy and had a negative impact on their quality of life.” But traditionally, life after cancer treatment for patients has meant a friendly “See ya at the next CT scan!” as we’re gently booted out the door.
In much the same way that doctors and caregivers often conspicuously downplay side effects of treatment — and may not even mention the emotional hell ride of it – they can neglect to acknowledge the difficulty of entering the world of survivorship. And patients, discouraged from sharing their post-treatment physical and mental changes, can find themselves assuming, as the NCI study’s lead author Kathryn Weaver says, that their pains and discomforts are simply “the new normal.”
Now, however, the American College of Surgeons has begun requiring cancer programs to offer rehabilitation services – and facilities like Johns Hopkins are stepping up. Rehab programs can help patients with physical and occupational therapy, diet and nutrition, “as well as treatment for sleep problems, depression and cognitive impairment.” At Florida’s Lee Memorial Health System, for example, a team of healthcare workers will now create a “personalized rehab plan for each patient.” And Medicare and most insurance companies are covering the services. It’s about friggin’ time.
Cancer is a unique – and peculiar – set of diseases. People in the thick of it are obnoxiously said to be “battling” it – and those who die have somehow “lost.” We cheerlead with chipper rah-rah-ism, spinning cancer as “crazy and sexy” instead of terrifying and painful.
It’s not that putting on a happy face and being positive aren’t important. Hope and resilience and joy are all essential. But those things alone won’t get a person’s strength back. It’s also vital that cancer patients get conscientious attention to the battery of peripheral crap that must be dealt with when living after disease and treatment. It’s important, if cancer facilities are to offer truly compassionate care, to inquire about and acknowledge the limitations that cancer imposes, and to help patients work through them. Healing doesn’t end the moment the scans are clear. Healing can be an arduous and frustrating road, a process fraught with setbacks and fear and the intense pressure to just get over it and be our old selves again. And healing can’t happen without help. As Lori McKitrick, a speech therapist who works with head and neck cancer patients says, “We are doing a great job saving people’s lives. But we have to help them live their lives too.” That’s a new “new normal” we can all aspire to.
Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.
Related Stories
More Related Stories
-
New York's most persecuted subway artist?
-
What's the Eiffel Tower doing in China?
-
Top 5 investigative videos of the week: Nailing a dictator
-
Will you marry me -- once you're done peeing?
-
My crushing student debt
-
Pollution as ancient Chinese art
-
Chimp's blurry pictures to fetch six figures at auction
-
Can playing Dots on your iPhone make you smarter?
-
Print your own gardening accessories
-
The week in 10 pics
-
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: "Sounds like diagnosis by committee"
-
Stop comparing everything to "Girls"!
-
Is killing a fetus murder?
-
New DSM, new debates over ADHD and autism
-
Berlusconi's parties featured women dressed as Obama
-
Should graduation ceremonies be multi-faith?
-
Federal government is letting us eat metal shards, pink slime
-
Photographed secretly at home: Is it art?
-
Obama pledges to end "scourge" of sexual assault in the military
-
My "truly remarkable" cancer breakthrough
-
I think this guy is stalking me
Featured Slide Shows
The week in 10 pics
close X- Share on Twitter
- Share on Facebook
- Thumbnails
- Fullscreen
- 1 of 11
- Previous
- Next
-
Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
Credit: AP/LM Otero -
Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
Credit: AP/Matt Rourke -
A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher -
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
Credit: AP/Molly Riley -
Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite -
Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster -
O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid -
Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield -
When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin -
A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin -
Recent Slide Shows
-
The week in 10 pics
-
The week in 10 pics
-
Mobile Entertainment: 9 Amazing Drive-In Movie Theaters Still Standing
-
The week in 10 pics
-
- Share on Twitter
- Share on Facebook
- Thumbnails
- Fullscreen
- 1 of 11
- Previous
- Next
-
The week in 10 pics
-
Mobile Entertainment: 9 Amazing Drive-In Movie Theaters Still Standing
-
The week in 10 pics
-
The week in 10 pics
-
The week in 10 pics
-
The week in 10 pics
-
Netflix's April Fools' Day categories
-
The week in 10 pics
-
The week in 10 pics
-
The week in 10 pics
-
The week in 10 pics
-
The week in 10 pics
-
Slideshow: Nerd Obama
Related Videos
Most Read
-
Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia
Andrew Leonard
-
Obstruction will ruin GOP
Jonathan Bernstein
-
Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class
Scott Timberg
-
Is Reddit censoring openly racist users?
Fidel Martinez, The Daily Dot
-
We're living in an Ayn Rand economy
Paul Buchheit, AlterNet
-
The man behind Abercrombie & Fitch
Benoit Denizet-Lewis
-
My "truly remarkable" cancer breakthrough
Mary Elizabeth Williams
-
When the IRS targeted liberals
Alex Seitz-Wald
-
Krist Novoselic: My plan to fix Congress, curb obstruction
Krist Novoselic
-
Will you marry me -- once you're done peeing?
Tracy Clark-Flory
Popular on Reddit
links from salon.com

63 points64 points65 points | 3 comments
From Around the Web
Presented by Scribol
-
Diane Gilman: Baby Boomers: A New Life-Construct -- From "Invisible to Invincible!" -
Susan Gregory Thomas: Why Divorced Boomer Moms Don't Deserve The Bad Rap -
British Nanny Offered An Annual Salary Of $200,000 -
Arianna Huffington: What I Did (and Didn't Do) On My Summer Vacation -
Vivian Diller, Ph.D.: Maybe Happiness Begins At 50




30 Places You'd Rather Be Sitting Right Now
Comments
10 Comments