Tumor Disappearance Does Not Mean Cancer Is Cured: Why Chronic-Disease Management Matters
Whether surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy, immunotherapy, or Chinese medicine is used, a considerable number of cancer patients can achieve the effect of tumor elimination. But no cancer patient who achieves tumor elimination through any of the above therapies is thereby cured.To this day I have never publicly claimed to have cured a single cancer patient. Many cancer patients ask me what my personal cure rate for cancer is; if I were to answer honestly, without considering the effect on the patient, I would answer zero. Because the patients who turn to me are themselves already advanced or end-stage. Early cancer still holds the possibility of cure; for advanced or end-stage cancer patients, pursuing a cure is an unrealistic expectation.The phrase 'cured of cancer,' so often used in the media, is highly misleading and easily lulls the psychology of some cancer patients and their families, leading cancer patients not to understand the importance of later chronic-disease management. In fact, those celebrities reported by the media as cured of cancer often relapse not long afterward. At the current level of medicine, there is as yet no method that can with certainty cure cancer patients. Otherwise, Jobs, rich as a nation, and Chavez, mighty and powerful, would not have died of cancer.Cancer is a chronic disease prone to relapse; cancer cells possess the ability to evolve and evade the assault of existing drugs. The occurrence and recurrence of cancer are related to many factors; genes, diet, exercise, emotion, and environment all exert a certain influence on the occurrence and recurrence of cancer.Doctors, patients, and families should treat cancer as a chronic disease and establish an awareness of chronic-disease management, so as to help patients obtain a longer survival time and a better quality of life. The level of chronic-disease management directly determines the length of a cancer patient's survival.Well managed, a person can survive for decades after cancer; poorly managed, the survival time is very short. The late national master of Chinese medicine He Ren and the renowned Fujian physician Professor Pan Mingji are both models of long-term struggle against their own cancer. Because they themselves understood some medical common sense, these two anti-cancer stars—who were both cancer patients and anti-cancer physicians—although they never cured their own cancer in a lifetime, both survived for decades with high quality.In Nanning there was a female nurse who had breast cancer when young; when she lived to over a hundred and was interviewed by a reporter, she said: 'If I had not had cancer, I could not have lived to such an advanced age.' The reason she said this is that cancer made her realize that if she did not manage her own health, she could die at any time from a recurrence.Many things in a person are hard to change from birth, such as genes; many people get cancer because their family genes are flawed. Common cancers such as breast, colorectal, gastric, and liver cancer mostly show familial clustering. The children of cancer patients have a five- to six-fold higher risk of cancer than ordinary people.There are also many habits a person forms in childhood that are hard to change in a lifetime, such as dietary and exercise habits. Some addictive behaviors are especially hard to change, such as smoking and drinking; long-standing addictive behaviors have already altered the brain. From the perspective of brain science, these are not merely simple psychological dependencies; organic changes have already occurred in the brain.Psychological factors are also related to genes, upbringing, and educational background, and to change them completely is no easy task. Family and social relationships are also very important to a person's health; cancer patients with poor family relationships have markedly shorter survival than those with harmonious families.All these are related to cancer, yet they are also the most stubborn part of a person's 'self.' Only the few people with strong powers of self-reflection and willpower can possibly change their 'self,' be reborn, and become a renewed person.Yet survival after cancer does indeed require acting on these combined factors. Chronic-disease management is very broad in meaning: appropriate treatment, self-correction, repairing family relationships, adjusting social relationships, changing dietary and exercise habits, and adjusting psychological state are all included in it. Placing all hope on the doctor is making a fatal mistake.I have always opposed the practice of families concealing the patient's true condition, because doing so completely violates the purpose of chronic-disease management for cancer patients. Cancer patients must realize that many of their behaviors and habits are wrong; only then can they cooperate with doctors, comprehensively improve themselves, and reconstruct a new 'self'—only then can they escape from the cancer demon's grasp.Concealing the condition from cancer patients seems to protect their fragile psychology, but in reality it indulges the patients' wrong behaviors and habits, making their recuperation an inhumane affair with very poor results. As long as attention is paid to the way the condition is disclosed, most cancer patients will rebuild their confidence to fight cancer and go on living, and will be able to cooperate with the doctor's advice to undergo appropriate treatment and self-correction.At present, because doctor resources are limited in our country, treatment of cancer patients is basically rough; few doctors can patiently have detailed communication with patients. As patients and families, it is necessary to learn more cancer-related knowledge yourselves and help yourselves plan a reasonable chronic-disease management program.The medical communities of developed countries do better in this regard, but their insurance and medical costs are expensive, and most Chinese residents cannot afford them. So you must care more for yourselves and your families. We are born in a developing country and have not ourselves made great efforts to create the wealth needed to buy expensive medical services; so accept reality, face reality, and start by changing yourselves.It is not easy for anyone to live in this world; no one is obliged to sympathize with us. If we want to live well, we must rely on our own efforts; that is true fairness.The four cornerstones of health published by the World Health Organization are: a balanced diet, moderate exercise, quitting smoking and limiting alcohol, and psychological balance. These four points look simple but are truly not easy to achieve. If even these cannot be done, what use is complaining about society or doctors? Should not those who cannot control their own behavior and emotions and have made a mess of their own health management first blame themselves?Rather than complain about unfair fate or unsatisfactory medical services, act and do your own chronic-disease management well, winning for yourselves a longer survival and a better quality of life.