There are lots of different ways to treat cancer. What kind of care you get will depend on what kind of cancer you have and how far along it is.
There are people who will only need one medicine for cancer. But most people get more than one type of treatment, like surgery along with chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
It is possible to fix cancer, shrink cancer, or stop it from spreading through surgery, radiation, medicines, and other treatments.
There are many ways to treat cancer. One treatment or a mix of treatments may be given to you, depending on your current condition.
Some things you need to learn and think about when you have cancer. It’s okay to feel confused and exhausted.
You can feel more in charge, though, if you talk to your doctor and learn about the different kinds of treatment you might get.
Check out our list of Questions to Ask Your Doctor About Treatment. It might be useful.
Why living a healthy life during treatment is important
Eating well, working out, and doing things that make you feel good can help you deal with the effects of cancer and its treatment. In fact, Dr. Yarmus says that some cancer medicines work better when you eat well, move around more, and stop doing bad things like smoking.
Dr. Yarmus says that living a healthy life can help lessen some side affects of cancer treatment, such as
- Weakness
- Sickness
- Spilling
- Stress
- Stress and worry
- Feeling Down
How to Keep Your Health Alive During and After Treatment
Living a healthy life can make your treatment for lung cancer and after it better. Finding out they have lung cancer can make some people want to take better care of their health. Some people find it tough to stick to new, healthy habits. Lean on the people who care about you, including your cancer care team, to help you live a healthier life.
Here are the five best good habits that can help you stay healthy during and after treatment:
- Stop smoking. There are instant benefits when you stop smoking, even if you have been diagnosed with lung cancer.
- Heart rate and blood pressure values that are normal
- Less likely to get long-term diseases like heart disease and high blood pressure
- Your lungs and breathing system will work better.
- Eat well: People with lung cancer need to pay attention to their nutrition. The things you eat can help you feel better, stay strong, and fight off sickness. Our service can put you in touch with a Johns Hopkins nutritionist who will help you make a healthy eating plan that fits your needs.
- Be active. Being active can help you feel less tired, keep your weight in a healthy range, and improve your happiness. It’s good for you to do some light stretching or walk slowly for short periods of time.
- Get help. It’s important to take care of your mental and emotional health as well as your physical health. There are people who have been through cancer and know what you’re going through who can help you. Find out more about how to help with lung cancer care.
- Care for yourself: Whether you or a helper is in charge of your cancer care, it’s important to have someone look out for your needs. This means talking to your cancer care team, making sure you keep your meetings, and keeping track of your symptoms and side effects.
Biomarker Testing to Treat Cancer
Biomarker testing looks for genes, proteins, and other things (also known as biomarkers or tumor markers) that can tell us about cancer. Biomarker tests can help you and your doctor decide how to treat your cancer.
Drug therapy
Using drugs to kill cancer cells is what chemotherapy is all about. Find out how chemotherapy fights cancer, why it has side effects, and how it is combined with other cancer medicines.
- A woman sitting next to a guy with her eyes closed and her head on his chest
- Use of Hormones
- Therapy with hormones can slow or stop the growth of breast and prostate cancers that depend on hormones to grow. Find out about the different kinds of hormone treatment and the health problems that might arise.
The doctor tells the patient about overheating.
Too much heat
Cancer cells can be killed by heating body tissue to as high as 113 °F. This is called hyperthermia. Normal tissue is not hurt too much, if at all. Hyperthermia is used to treat certain kinds of cancer and precancerous growths. Find out how it is given and what its pros and cons are.
Immunotherapy
One way to treat cancer that helps your immune system fight it is called immunotherapy. What kinds of immunotherapy are there? How do they work against cancer? What can you expect during treatment?
Light-based therapy for cancer
Using light to heal
A drug that is turned on by light is used in photodynamic treatment to kill cancer cells and other abnormal cells. Find out how photodynamic therapy works, what kinds of cancer and precancerous growths it treats, and what its pros and cons are.
Therapy with radiation
With radiation therapy, large amounts of radiation are used to kill cancer cells and make tumors smaller. There are different kinds of radioactivity. Find out more about them, their side effects, the side effects you might have, and more.
Apheresis machine is hooked up to a chair that a woman is sitting in. The needle in one arm draws blood into the apheresis machine, where it is taken out. After that, blood is taken from the apheresis machine into her other arm with a different needle.
Transplant of Stem Cells
Stem cell transplants are surgeries that bring back stem cells that can turn into blood cells for people whose own cells were destroyed by high amounts of radiation or chemotherapy. Find out about the different kinds of transplants, the possible side effects, and how stem cell transplants are used to treat cancer.
Surgery
When surgery is used to cure cancer, the cancer is taken out of the body by the surgeon. To fight cancer, surgery can be used in different ways. Find out what to expect before, during, and after surgery.
- A DNA strand, a bottle of medicine, and a picture of people in silhouette
- Therapy with a focus
- As a way to treat cancer, targeted therapy goes after the changes in cancer cells that help them multiply, grow, and spread. Find out how targeted treatment fights cancer and what side effects it most often causes.
Treatment as a whole
Drugs that work on the whole body are part of systemic treatment. These include hormones, chemotherapy, targeted therapy, antibodies, vaccines, biological response modifiers, integrative oncology, and immune-modulators.
Some of the benefits of systemic treatment are:
- the power to kill a lot of cancer cells all over the body, including cancer cells in the main tumor and other tumors in the body
- work with radiation treatment to kill more cells than either therapy could do on its own.
- power to kill microscopic disease at the edge of the main tumor that a surgeon might not be able to see with the naked eye. This makes it less likely that cancer cells will be left behind after surgery.
- A key part of personalized medicine is making sure that each patient gets the right general treatment, such as hormone therapies specifically designed for breast cancer and targeted therapies specifically designed for lung cancer.
- Preserving an organ means not taking out a breast, larynx, or part of the digestive system, which would have a big effect on the patient’s quality of life.
- Some bad things about systemic treatment are:
- not being able to kill a tumor by itself (systemic treatment usually needs to be used with surgery or radiation therapy).
- systemic treatment can’t be given to a patient who is on certain drugs (like blood thinners), about to have surgery, or has certain health problems (like kidney failure, liver failure, or heart disease).
- systemic toxins (because the treatments go through the body and may affect all healthy tissues): The side effects depend on the treatment and can be different for each drug.
- not being able to reach the tumor (for example, not being able to cross the blood-brain barrier or reach a limb with poor circulation).
- Getting rid of cancer cells in tumors in a way that isn’t very even is like randomly popping half of a hundred beach balls—you don’t know where the other half (the live cancer cells) are.
- systemic treatment can be inconvenient. For example, some types of chemotherapy need to be given every day, five days a week, for weeks, or they need to be taken by mouth for years.
Anyone who has a say in the treatment decision?
You will always have a dedicated team of healthcare workers by your side as you go through this process. Oncologists, rehabilitation and palliative care experts, a surgeon, a pathologist, a pharmacist, a nurse, a dietitian, a case manager, a social worker, and others may be on your team. These experts will look at your case and suggest the treatments they think will work best.
The people who are treating your cancer will help you and your family make the hard choices about treatment. There are many things to think about, such as the goal of your treatment, any possible side effects, and the cost.
Most of the time, people think about their treatment plan for a few weeks. This gives you enough time to talk about your choices with doctors, family, and friends before you decide on a treatment plan that you can easily follow through with. You can keep track of your care with our free Cancer care Plan.
Give yourself time to pick a treatment
You should really think about which treatment plan is best for you before you decide on it. People with cancer who are in a hurry to start treatment often make choices before they know all of their options. This could make you feel bad or even make your treatment plan less effective. Instead, ask questions, do study, or even get a second opinion to help you think about your choices.
Aside from that, keep in mind that the choice you make is not final. You can change your mind at any time and pick a different treatment plan.
The steps below may help you make a full picture of your treatment plan as you start to think about your cancer care choices.
Think about who will decide how to treat you
The first thing you need to decide is if you want to be involved in making decisions at all. It might feel hard to make choices about your treatment plan. For that matter, you may not want to talk about your cancer at all, and you don’t have to.
You might want to ask a friend or family member to help you understand your cancer and your choices. There are a lot of cancer patients who would rather let their doctor decide how to treat them. You might want to make choices with the help of your doctor. You decide.
Learn about your diagnosis
If you decide to take part in your own cancer care, you should first learn more about what has caused your cancer. They know a lot about health care. Nearly probably, they are willing to answer any question you have about your illness.
Be careful when you look up information about cancer online. Not every site has been checked out by doctors. There may be information on websites that is wrong, scary, confusing, or just doesn’t apply to your case. Your care team can help you find safe sites to continue your study if you want to do it at home.
Choose what you want your treatment to do
We hope for a fix all the time, but it might not be possible. Your doctor will tell you the truth about how far along your cancer is and the different ways it can be treated. Your treatment choices will depend a lot on what you want to do—cure, slow, or just live with your cancer.
You can change your goals after you’ve chosen a goal. You might change your mind about what side effects you’re ready to deal with, how long you’re willing to spend on treatment, and other things.
Learn about the treatments you can get
Your choices for cancer care depend on where the cancer is, how it is acting, and what stage it is in.
Some treatments, like surgery and radiation therapy, can be done close to home. Local medicines focus on a certain part of the body to target the cancer and the tissues around it.
Some types of cancer treatment, like chemotherapy and other drugs, work all over the body. Systemic medicines work on the body as a whole.
Your doctors may choose local treatments, systemic treatments, or a mix of the two based on the type of cancer and its stage.
Common Ways to Treat Cancer
Your choices for cancer care depend on where the cancer is, how it is acting, and what stage it is in.
Some treatments, like surgery and radiation therapy, can be done close to home. Local medicines focus on a certain part of the body to target the cancer and the tissues around it.
Some types of cancer treatment, like chemotherapy and other drugs, work all over the body. Systemic medicines work on the body as a whole.
Find out about the bad affects of your care
Some people don’t have any side effects from treatments like radiation therapy, but some side effects are common with these kinds of treatments. Some side effects might only last a short time and be easy to deal with. Some may have effects that last a long time.
Talk to your doctor about the possible side effects of each treatment before making a choice. You might not want to risk some side effects, like not being able to have children. There could also be side affects that aren’t what you want. You and your doctor need to talk about possible side effects before you can make a plan that puts your health and goals first.
Talk about the good and bad points of each method
There are pros and cons to each type of medicine. There are pros and cons to each of these things. Your doctor can help you decide which ones are worth it and which ones are not.
The main benefit you should talk about is, of course, how well the medicine works or how likely it is that the person will get better. You and your doctor should talk about more than just side effects. You should also talk about other things that might change your daily life, like how treatment might affect your freedom or quality of life. For instance, will your treatment make it harder for you to work or take care of your family?
You should also think about things that are more practical, like your insurance choices and how much the treatments will cost. If you’re close to your family, you might also want to think about what they would like.
Choose whether you want a second view
A second opinion might seem like an awkward thing to do, but a lot of doctors actually tell cancer patients to do it. As each doctor has had a unique experience, they may be able to offer different ideas or ways of doing things. The view of another doctor might help you feel more confident about your choice of treatment.
Think about prices and insurance.
Unfortunately, cancer can cost a lot of money, and your insurance company may not cover all of your treatments. Make sure you know which treatments, doctors, and healthcare systems are covered by your insurance by calling them. If there are treatments that your insurance doesn’t cover, you should look at your budget to see if you can afford to pay for them yourself.
Talk to people you trust about your choices
Being told you have cancer is a heavy thing to carry. Don’t be afraid to ask people you care about what they think about your choices. Even having someone else in the room with you while you talk to your doctor about your treatment plan can help. A different person could give you new ideas for questions or things to think about.
You could also get in touch with other people who have cancer. Talking about your feelings with people who really understand can be both comfortable and helpful. Your healthcare team can help you find a support group in your area or a safe online community.
Keep in touch with your doctor at all times
Know that your doctor is there to help you at all times. You should feel free to ask your doctor anything you want to know about your cancer and how to care for it. If you don’t understand something, ask your doctor to explain it to you.
It might be hard to write down your thoughts when you’re in the exam room talking about your choices. We suggest that you write down your questions ahead of time. Bring a family member or friend with you so they can ask any questions you might miss. You can even record your visit with your doctor and listen to it again when you’re calm.
If you don’t like your care plan at any point during your treatment, you should let your doctor know. There’s a chance that your doctor can change how you work out.
