Stand Up to Cancer

[Wonnacott35]

In the info bits of the programs that are running at the moment it says 1 in 2 people get cancer. That seems so much worse than I thought it was. It's such a horrible illness and seems to be much worse than when I was younger but I guess people died and they didn't know why - whereas now with better diagnostic tests you can get treatment hopefully quicker than before. It just shocked me ...

People are living longer with cancer and the survival rate are improving for most cancers although there are a few where prognosis hasn't significantly improved. When I started Oncology nursing 30 years ago chemotherapy was very basic and people frequently died from cancers like lymphoma and leukemia wheras today they have a good chance of survival.

We’ve got much better at treating heart disease and preventing lung disease. People are just living longer. By the time you get to ninety your chances of experiencing a highly treatable non-melanoma skin cancer for example, is extremely high: the only way to prevent that from happening is not to survive to ninety.