Cancer and disability
People can live with a cancer diagnosis for many years. They may have active disease which is being treated, be in remission from their cancer (their cancer is not visible on tests and they are well, but we know that the cancer will come back at some stage) or be cured. It is often difficult to know whether people are in remission from their cancer or cured.
From 2008, patients will be given a written summary of their disease and the treatment they had. This is likely to include some guidance on late side effects of treatment and signs of recurrent disease to look out for. This summary will be very useful evidence when it becomes a wide spread feature of cancer care. Some patients may already have such summaries available at home.
Knowing the first date of diagnosis of the cancer and what treatment a person is having will be helpful in working out which category a person is in. In addition, information from the GP or a Hospital factual report may give stage (size and spread of the primary tumour) and grading (aggressiveness of the cancer cells) information. Staging and grading information give us good information on likely survival and treatability of cancer across groups of patients but do not tell us how an individual is going to manage, or how disabling they will find their disease. It is likely that there will be disabling effects of cancer treatment for a variable length of time after diagnosis depending on what treatment is given. These are the short term disabling effects of cancer treatment.
A minority of people will have ongoing disabling problems after their treatment, or develop disabling problems due to the treatment some years later; these are the long term or enduring effects of cancer treatment. These residual disabling effects will arise from one of three categories:
- cancer and its treatment e.g. lymphoedema, peripheral neuropathy
- depression
- pre-existing disabilities or conditions
Most will be fine unless their cancer returns in which case they may undergo further treatment (with disabling effects) which restores them to health or they may become chronically or terminally ill.
