 Patient Advocate (old timer, 2000 posts)
Joined: Nov 2002 Posts: 3,552 | I was "rigorously" honest about pain and it's management to my doctors and wife. Suffering does NOT make you heal faster and this macho stuff is for idiots.
The NCCN guidelines have a pain scale - people should use it to describe their pain. It didn'r embarrass me one iota to ask for and get the strongest narcotics lawfully available. Cancer pain and distress caused from it, is well understood and is also part of the NCCN oncology practice guidelines.
And I whined a lot - just ask my wife.
At 5K a treatment (for radiation) you'd have to be gray and gurgling before they will stop your treatment, besides people who stop treatment early typically have much lower survival rates.
Gary Allsebrook
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Dx 11/22/02, SCC, 6 x 3 cm Polypoid tumor, rt tonsil, Stage III/IVA, T3N0M0 G1/2
Tx 1/28/03 - 3/19/03, Cisplatin ct x2, IMRT, bilateral, with boost, x35(69.96Gy)
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"You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:14 NIV)
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