All posts in Cancer Support

Holiday Gifts for Cancer Patients

The holidays are here, and people are drafting lists of loved ones and gift ideas all over the country. If someone on your gift list is a cancer patient, however, finding the right gift can be a challenge. Cancer is a sensitive subject for anyone, and it’s difficult to know how to keep gifts respectful while also expressing how much you care. At Pasadena CyberKnife, our mission is to make the cancer treatment process as easy as possible for everyone. Here’s our guide to holiday gift-giving to cancer patients.

A Survivor Memoir

Books can be a source of encouragement, learning, and relaxation during treatment, and many patients find that reading stories of other cancer sufferers who survived can be heartening, therapeutic activity. A memoir from a cancer survivor makes a great gift for any cancer patient in your life. If you’re not sure where to start, check out It’s Only Temporary: The Good News & Bad News of Being Alive by Evan Handler.

A Unique Plant

This may sound surprising, but having something to care for – even something as simple as a potted plant – can actually be a tremendously positive factor for a cancer patient. The act of nurturing is rewarding on a deep emotional level, and caring for a beautiful plant helps many patients find solace in the day-to-day of the cancer treatment process. Succulents are an excellent choice for a gift to a cancer patient, as they’re unique, visually beautiful, and relatively easy to care for.

A Cleaning Service

Sometimes, the most mundane gifts can be the most impactful. One of the things that many people fail to realize about fighting cancer is that during the battle, life doesn’t stop. There are still dishes to be done, countertops to be cleaned, and clothes to be folded – and if a cancer patient just feels too exhausted to deal with cleaning, it’s easy for things to start piling up. Something as simple as an occasional cleaning service can make a powerful positive impact for a cancer patient, making an excellent holiday gift.

Contact Your Los Angeles Radiation Therapy Center

At the end of the day, the exact gift you give isn’t so important: what matters most is the care and love you show through the act of giving, and the ongoing support you provide as your loved one battles cancer. If someone you love is currently going through the fight against cancer or has recently been diagnosed, they deserve the best in their treatment – and Pasadena CyberKnife is here to help. As a leading radiation therapy clinic serving the Los Angeles area, we offer state-of-the-art CyberKnife treatment for many cancerous conditions. Contact us today to schedule a consultation and find out if we can help you or your loved one win the fight against cancer. Until then, we wish you a happy holiday season full of resilience, strength, and love.

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Supporting Your Partner During Cancer Treatment

How to Support Your Partner During Prostate Cancer Treatment

Prostate cancer treatment supportProstate cancer doesn’t just affect the man diagnosed; the disease’s impact also extends to his partner, children, parents, and friends. As the partner of a man with prostate cancer, it can be hard to know how to respond and what to do to support your other half through his treatment and beyond. The diagnosis itself is terrifying for many partners. Physical and emotional healing after treatment can take a long time, and side effects may linger.

If your partner is diagnosed with prostate cancer, you can offer both practical and emotional support by gathering information, being present for doctor’s appointments, and encouraging your partner to get plenty of rest, eat right, and take good care of himself. You should know what to expect following your partner’s diagnosis. Don’t forget to take care of yourself, too.

Give Your Partner Practical Support

One of the most important things you can do as the partner of a man going through or about to begin prostate cancer treatment is to offer practical support. This means accompanying your partner to doctor’s appointments and treatment sessions, as long as he’s amenable to it. Ask questions, make notes, and be an advocate for your partner during his treatment. Often, you’ll pick up on things that your partner may have been too distracted to notice. Your partner may also need help with transportation, scheduling, filing insurance claims, and other mundane tasks related to treatment.

You can also help your partner by communicating with others in his life about his diagnosis. Many men prefer to keep a diagnosis of prostate cancer private, but if your partner wants to reveal his diagnosis and treatment progress to others close to him, he may need you to do the talking. Be prepared to help your partner talk with loved ones about his prostate cancer.

Support during prostate cancer treatmentBe There for Your Partner Emotionally

Prostate cancer and its treatment can leave emotional wounds as well as physical ones. Encourage your partner to discuss his feelings with you, but don’t be pushy about it. Remind him that he’s not less of a man because of prostate cancer, and that it can take some time for him to begin to feel like his old self again.

Know What to Expect

Knowing what to expect after a prostate cancer diagnosis can make it easier for both of you to cope. Depending on the treatment, your partner may face side effects including:

  • Temporary or ongoing erectile dysfunction
  • Low sex drive
  • Weight gain and muscle loss
  • Hot flashes
  • Brittle bones
  • Fatigue
  • Urinary incontinence or bowel problems
  • Infertility

Sometimes prostate cancer treatment can cause cognitive changes, too, including memory problems and trouble concentrating. Radiosurgery treatment through CyberKnife will leave patients with fewer side effects.

Take Care of Yourself

You won’t be able to support your partner if you allow yourself to become emotionally depleted, so take care of yourself, too. In addition to eating right, exercising, and getting plenty of sleep, take time for the hobbies you enjoy and the other people and things you love. Spend time with friends, talking about things other than your partner’s prostate cancer. Set aside time to relax each day.

It’s not easy supporting a partner who’s going through prostate cancer treatment. You can help by handling many of the mundane tasks associated with managing medical care, and by offering your partner a kind ear. Facing prostate cancer takes courage, but the two of you will win out in the end.

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Smoking & Prostate Cancer

Quit Smoking to Improve Your Prostate Cancer Treatment Outcomes

Smoking during prostate cancer treatmentAccording to the results of a new study, men who smoke during prostate cancer treatment are not only more likely to experience treatment side effects, they’re also more likely to experience a recurrence or even die from prostate cancer.

While men who have never smoked before in their lives run the least risk of experiencing prostate cancer treatment side effects, cancer recurrence, or death, the study found that even men who quit smoking right before beginning cancer treatment enjoyed better treatment outcomes than those who continued smoking throughout treatment.

Smoking Makes Prostate Cancer Treatment Less Effective

The study, performed by researchers from New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and published in the journal BJU International, examined the effects of smoking history among a group of 2,358 patients who received external beam radiotherapy for prostate cancer between 1988 and 2005. 2,156 of the study participants had some kind of smoking history. Researchers divided the patients into four categories: never smokers, current smokers, former smokers, and current smoking status unknown. Even those participants who quit smoking right before beginning prostate cancer treatment were included in the “former smoker” category.

The researchers followed up with the study participants eight years after they received treatment. They found that patients who smoked during the cancer treatment had a 40 percent higher risk of relapse. Those who smoked during treatment were also twice as likely to experience prostate cancer metastasis and to die from prostate cancer, when compared to those who had never smoked.

prostate cancer treatmentPatients who were considered former smokers under the terms of the study also had a slightly elevated risk of cancer recurrence, metastasis, and death, but their risks were somewhat lower than those of patients who smoked throughout cancer treatment. Ten years later, only about 52 percent of patients who smoked throughout treatment had not suffered a recurrence of prostate cancer, while 63 percent of former smokers and 66 percent of never smokers were still in the clear.

While today’s patients can choose from a far wider range of prostate cancer treatment options, external beam radiotherapy remains one of the oldest treatments for the disease. There is no reason to believe that the impact of smoking on the efficacy of other prostate cancer treatments, like stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), would be any different than its impact on the efficacy of external beam radiotherapy. The study authors believe that smoking could contribute to the formation of more aggressive cancer tumors. They also speculate that smoking during cancer treatment could interfere with treatment by lowering oxygen levels within tumor cells, making them less susceptible to the effects of radiation.

In addition to an enhanced risk of cancer recurrence, metastasis, and death, current and former smokers involved in the study also experienced a greater risk of a range of urinary side effects. These side effects included urinary incontinence, urinary toxicity, bladder hemorrhage, and urinary retention.

If you want to improve your chances of a good treatment outcome for prostate cancer, you might want to consider quitting smoking. While researchers don’t yet fully understand the relationship between smoking and prostate cancer, new evidence suggests that smoking during treatment can make treatment less effective. If you’re a smoker who’s already been diagnosed with prostate cancer, it’s not too late — quitting smoking can still make a difference, even if you do it right before you start treatment.

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Physical Changes After Cancer Treatment

How to Deal With Physical Changes After Cancer Treatment Ends

After cancer treatmentEven after cancer treatment ends, you may find that you are still coping with physical changes related to treatment. These changes can range from reduced strength and endurance to lasting fatigue, pain, weight changes, and sexual changes.

While you may be able to counteract many of these lasting side effects with regular exercise, good nutrition, and other positive lifestyle changes, many side effects may linger for months or years after treatment ends, and it’s important to know how to cope.

Fatigue

No matter what kind of cancer you’ve suffered or what kind of treatment you’ve received, you may experience fatigue for a long time after your treatment ends. This kind of fatigue doesn’t go away with sleep. Though researchers don’t yet understand what causes treatment-related fatigue in cancer patients, it may occur due to poor nutrition, dehydration, anemia, pain, and depression.

Gentle exercise, relaxation, pain control, good nutrition, and drinking more fluids can help combat fatigue. Ask your treatment team about ways to fight fatigue. The causes of fatigue in people who have finished cancer treatment are different from the causes of fatigue in people who are still receiving treatment, so if you experienced fatigue during treatment, don’t be surprised if the solutions change.

Pain

Lingering pain may occur due to nerve damage caused by chemotherapy or damage to the skin caused by radiation therapy. Surgery scars can also cause pain after treatment ends. Some therapies for post-treatment pain include:

  • Antidepressants or narcotic painkillers
  • Acupuncture
  • Physical therapy
  • Braces
  • Yoga
  • Meditation
  • Hypnosis
  • Nerve blocks or other surgery

You can lower your risk of post-treatment pain with SBRT, a form of radiation therapy that minimizes damage to healthy tissue to reduce or eliminate complications.

After cancer treatmentWeight Changes

Some kinds of cancer therapy can cause weight gain, and after treatment, survivors find that it’s even harder than it should be to lose the weight because normal methods of weight loss don’t work. Chemotherapy can cause patients to lose muscle tissue and gain fatty tissue. Other survivors struggle with the opposite problem — they lose weight and can’t gain it back.

If you’re trying to lose weight after cancer treatment, you may want to try a combination of strength-training exercises and a healthy, low-calorie diet. If you want to gain more weight after cancer treatment, you may want to try:

  • Eating several smaller meals instead of three larger ones.
  • Eating more of your favorite foods.
  • Making your meals look attractive.
  • Using sauces, savory vegetables, and other seasonings to add flavor to foods.

Sexual Changes

Sexual changes are common after cancer treatment, especially among people who have had breast, prostate, or other reproductive cancer treatment. Survivors report losing interest in sex because of changes in body image, fatigue, pain, or simply a lowered sex drive. Others experience physical problems that make it harder to be intimate. Whatever the problem, it’s important that you ask your doctor about medication, counseling, or other therapies that can help resolve it. A sex therapist may also be able to help you and your partner come up with solutions.

Physical changes like pain and fatigue can persist for months after cancer treatment ends — some changes may last even longer. While it’s easy to get discouraged in the face of lingering cancer treatment side effects, try not to let these physical changes get you down. With time and a little creativity, you’ll soon find ways to enjoy yourself in spite of any lasting treatment side effects — and you may even find that most side effects do go away eventually, even if it takes a while.

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SBRT for Lung Cancer

10 Years of Use Proves the Safety and Efficacy of SBRT for Lung Cancer

SBRT for Lung CancerAccording to researchers from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, a decade of lung cancer treatment with SBRT has proven that this focused radiation therapy is not only effective for controlling the growth and spread of lung cancer, it can also limit radiation exposure for the patient. The researchers tracked the results of SBRT for inoperable, early-stage lung cancer from 2003 to 2013. During that time, a mere 13 percent of the patients studied demonstrated any side effects, and even among those that did, symptoms were usually minimal.

50-in-5 Regimen

For the purposes of the study, patients received what the researchers dubbed the “50-in-5 regimen” of SBRT, which consists of a total of 50 Gy of focused radiation delivered over the course of five sessions. Between October 2003 and December 2012, 300 patients received the 50-in-5 regimen to treat a total of 340 non-small cell lung cancer lesions. The average patient was 74 years old and over half the patients studied were women. A little more than 18 percent were cigarette smokers, although most of the patients were considered inoperable for other reasons.

The majority of the patients only needed a single course of SBRT for lung cancer treatment. Treatments were administered daily over a five-day period. Fifteen percent of the patients needed one or more additional courses of SBRT because their cancer came back. The short course of treatment with SBRT and the effectiveness of the treatment are why so many patients now choose CyberKnife for non-invasive lung cancer treatment.

SBRT for Lung CancerHigh Efficacy, Low Toxicity

Though researchers did find that SBRT was effective at treating non-small cell lung cancer, they did point out that only 47 percent of the patients were alive at the five-year follow-up, largely due to patients’ advanced age and the occurrence of other diseases that affect survival. While SBRT did eliminate the cancer within the lung, a significant percentage of patients experienced a return of cancer in another part of the body.

Nevertheless, Cleveland Clinic Foundation radiation oncologist Dr. Gregory Videtic called the treatment “an amazing technology for a population of patients who previously had no other options.” He believes that this non-invasive, focused radiation treatment could extend the life spans of up to 20,000 people each year by giving those who aren’t healthy enough for surgery another option.

Furthermore, SBRT is one of the safest forms of cancer treatment. A mere 13 percent of the patients studied exhibited any side effects at all due to the treatment, and all of those were low-level, minor side effects. In 75 percent to 80 percent of the cases, side effects were minor enough to heal on their own, and within a short time frame. Previous studies seemed to suggest that SBRT was very safe, but this study is important because side effects from radiation treatment can sometimes appear several years after treatment ends. The length of the study period allowed the researchers to evaluate the long-term safety of the procedure.

According to the results of a new 10-year study from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, SBRT is effective and remains safe, even in the long term. If you or someone you love is suffering from inoperable lung cancer, this non-invasive procedure could help you overcome cancer with just one short round of treatment.

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