Cancer Treatment Options Forum - April 17th, 2011 - 9 Comments
Can chemo cause cancer or can my cancer come back?
Im a 16 year old girl and im a cancer surviver(bone cancer) on my right back shoulder so its tooken out when i was 4, and hopefully getting a plastic bone when i stop growing maybe 20. I took chemo, and im just worried sometimes if it will ever come back maybe from chemo or anything like that im just thinking about it sometimes, and i just want to know for my future, because i have big hopes and dreams, i just want to know the percentage of if it can come back in the future or not..please.and thank you.
i just heard from this show called doctors, that chemo or watever can have sideeffects and maybe causes bad stuff.
Yes, many times chemotherapy actually causes cancers to metasticize. Chemo is very ineffective way of dealing with cancer. In fact, it only helps 2 to 3% of the people who get it. The reason cancer is now rated as "CURED" after 5 years of survivability is that it is the only way they could figure out how to justify the current way of dealing with cancer statistics to make them look better than the dismal truth.
EARLY DIAGNOSIS is what is being promoted as a way to help prevent cancer from getting a foothold, but the real reality is so that the they can claim more cancer success. The 5 year CURE is from the time of diagnosis. If you die at 5 years 1 month, you were cured, but still died.
Since you are 16 and had the problem at 4 years old, you have a better chance of not getting the cancer again. You need to figure out what was the driver causing the cancer. Did you have any infections anywhere in your body? What was the health of your mother and did she have any health issues relating to infections or heavy metal toxicity, etc.
Your best thing to do is to focus on being healthy and develop a good immune system. Get educated on health and don’t listen to the typical so called "food experts" you see on yahoo that have no clue what they are doing and just promoting the food industry garbage. Learn from real experts. A very good start is to get the DVD from NetFlix or local video store the movie called "Healing Cancer."
EDIT: I would challenge any person here that does not provide credible data proving THEIR diatribes to show us all here sound, credible evidence that ADVANCED BREAST CANCER TUMOR PATIENTS BEING TREATED WITH CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE DO BETTER OR LIVE LONGER THAN UNTREATED. Where is your study that shows that?
Please do NOT insult our intelligence by using some "Relative Benefit" study, but use ONLY an "Absolute Benefit" study, like the major trickery used for Tamofifen where the Absolute Benefit was 1.5% and the Relative Benefit was 49%. I simply want to make sure you are honest in how you report your findings.
Yes, there are several cancers to consider when establishing the percentage of cases that are lumped into the 2 – 3% cure rates. You are right about that. Here is that data showing the % cured (defined using the word cured to mean that ridiculous 5 year survival rate) for a specific cancer using the conventional chemotherapy & radiation or surgery:
Uterus: 00.0%; Stomach 00.7%; Colon 01.0%; Breast 01.4%; Head & Neck: 01.9%; Lung 2.0%; Rectal 3.4%; Brain 3.7%; Esophagus 04.9%; Ovary 08.9%; Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma 10.5%; Cervix 12%; Testes 37.7%; Hodgkin’s 40.3%.
Now realize that Testes and Hodgkin’s only represents 2% of the total cancers.
Now realize that ANY drug evaluated by the medical community that shows less than 30% effectiveness is considered to be LESS THAN A PLACEBO. So, a sugar pill is just as effective as about 98% or more cancer treatments used today! ! !
A study was done called "The Contribution of Cytotoxic Chemotherapy to 5-year Survival in Adult Malignancies. This study took every randomized controlled clinical trial performed in the U.S. from 1990 to 2004 and the results showed the above Cancer cure statistics.
You will be interested to know that the AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY in 2007 said "Surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy… seldom produce a cure." That was a quote from the "CANCER FACTS & FIGURES 2007."
I do wish the medical people would STOP using the word CURE for cancer at the 5 year survival rate. This is deceptive and degrading to science. CURE in all other diseases, except Cancer, is defined as "ELIMINATION OF DISEASE." Why NOT be honest for a change about what is really going on?
good luck to you
No, Chemo cannot give you cancer, that would ruin the point of Chemo wouldn’t it? Silly
Dear Mally, you have been cancer free for a very long time…a good thing. Everyone worries about Cancer…those who have had it are afraid it will return, those that don’t have it are afraid they will. The good news is that with each passing day strides are being made and progress is being won. Cancer is not the "death sentence" that it once was. With the new medications that have been discovered, the fear of Cancer is not so great. What I’m saying is to try not to worry about it too much. We all know the possibility of getting Cancer is out there, but why waste time thinking about something that may never happen. Concentrate on your studies and your dreams. Live each day to the fullest and don’t dwell on the negative, only the positive. I am sure you have a long and wonderful life ahead of you.
The radiative therapy would expose the body to rays that you generally want to avoid if you can, similar to X-rays. In the case of a cancer sufferer the benefit (treating your cancer) far outweighs the longer term risk.
in medicin it’s quite difficult to give acurate probablilities of getting an illness, surviving an illness etc. but that shouldn’t be a problem in this case: you have big hopes and dreams and that’s great! you should have and pursue them, no matter what.
to answer your questions: it’s highly unlikely your bone cancer is going to come back after this time. generally the risk is very, very low after being 5 years or more cancer free (that goes for most kind of cancers, all the bone cancers that affect children that i know would be included). being a patient that underwent chemotherapy, however, you do have a higher risk than other people to develop a different kind of cancer (mainly leukemia, possibly bladder cancer… depending on the kind of medication you received.) still: cancer is quite a rare disease. having a slightly higher risk of developing it still leaves only a very small likelihood of getting it again.
right now you should not worry about it, but go after all the dreams you have. chances are, you’ll achieve a lot of them and die happily when you’re 98!
If it’s the afternoon soap ‘Doctors’ you’re talking about, remember it’s fiction.
Sometimes people get hold of ideas like ‘chemo kills’ because with most cancers there are few ill effects if any until the cancer is quite advanced, and a person with an aggressive and advanced cancer usually looks, feels and behaves like a healthy person.
Then if they have chemotherapy side effects of the drugs can make them ill, sometimes very ill and frail, while treatment is taking place.
So some people conclude that the treatment is worse than the disease, and myths about people being killed by chemo bolster this belief.
Chemo isn’t always effective. But in those cases it is the cancer, not the treatment, that kills the patient – they have died in spite of treatment, not because of it. Distressed relatives sometimes look for something or someone to blame, and some conclude that it was the treatment that killed the person.
These are the facts about chemotherapy causing cancer:
With some types of chemotherapy, and in some cancers, there is a very slightly increased chance of developing a second type of cancer later.
Generally this is more likely to happen when the original cancer was a lymphoma, but it can happen very occasionally with other types of cancer.
Fortunately this very serious long-term effect is EXTREMELY RARE. But yes it happens, and yes very occasionally someone dies as a result.
Lo_mcg has given you an excellent, accurate answer and has put it into perspective. Onlymatch4u, on the other hand, is talking nonsense. This chap isn’t a medical professional, is scientifically illiterate and basically has no idea what he is talking about.
@Onlymatch4u: There are over 200 different types of cancer and over 50 chemotherapy drugs, which are given in various different ways. Which ones are you referring to? Where is your data? Why are you always so vague with your answers?
I wasn’t going to answer this because the truth is, I don’t know. I can tell what I know. When my brother had an inoperable brain tumor, the chemo they gave him shrunk his tumor 90%. Chemo was stopped. Dr’s felt great about it. 3 months later it (the tumor) came back. No details, can’t do it again. Just know that you had surgery at 4, Your cancer was removed, that was 12 yrs ago and it doesn’t sound like cancer shows any signs of returning. As far as chemo causing cancer, for the rest of my family with the exception of my brother, all were survivors. Who knows if all those cancer cells die with chemo. No one knows because they are just that, tiny little mutated cells that can hide and mutate and attack whenever they want. In your case, it doesn’t look like that. That could mean your cancer was contained. You’re old enough now that you should get a copy of the medical report, sit down with an Oncologist and ask them what it means. What they found. Only an Oncologist can tell you/ Your future looks pretty bright from where I sit. 12 yrs and no sign of cancer. That’s should tell you something. Enjoy life and have a terrific future. God bless
ADD Holy cow, I just read all the other answers. It sounds like War of the worlds. Did your question get answered?
Heya
I am also 16 and was diagnosed with bone cancer (osteosarcoma) when i was 8 and then again when i was 11.
Although my cancer came back, it was within the 3 year time frame in which your cancer has a higher chance of returning. (this is for osteosarcoma)
You have been cancer free for many years meaning you have practically (some doctors argue that chemo drugs can up the chance but by something like 0.2%) just as much chance of getting cancer as a person who has never had it before.
I wouldn’t worry. live life for the moment!
If anything, that’s what having cancer has really taught me
I really hope this helps and that everything goes well for you in the future