Cancer – What Can Be Done?

CEBU, Philippines — The current month is abuzz about cancer, breast cancer in particular. There are various public events intended to bring to the public mind the reality of the threat of the disease. Everyone is a potential candidate for cancer.

The great majority of us enjoy comfortably good physical condition, except for an occasional headache or fever, which we handle quite well when it strikes. A pill or two goes down easily with our coffee. So, we normally take our health for granted.

We are always outward-looking. We give priority to everything and everyone else before ourselves. I often share a funny fact with my friends: “When my dog doesn’t eat his food in the morning, we’re in the vet’s clinic by noon. But when I wake up feeling unwell, I’d think it will just go away, and I’d bear with it for days.”

“I know I’m okay, why bother?” my friend would always say. The man was a successful professional, a good father and husband, and an active civic leader. One day he complained of headache and blurring eyesight. A few months after, he died of cancer.

Many of us find it unnecessary to change the order of things when everything seems to be going all right. We’d reason, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” We go on smoking and drinking excessively; indulge in rich, fatty foods; prefer to be sedentary most of the time; and see no need to give up the lifestyle.

Besides, we’ve heard that to be always finding something wrong with ourselves only makes matters worse. So we let things be – bad as they are – until it begins to hurt. The thing is – when it begins to hurt, the condition is often already so bad that there is little or nothing that can be done about it.

True, our body has natural disease-fighting capability. Most of the time, it can ward off and recover from illness by itself. Sadly, “most of the time” doesn’t mean “all the time.”

Especially considering our toxic environment these days, aggravated by our unhealthy lifestyle, we need to pay attention to our body. We need to assist it in maintaining good health and to nip developing ailments in the bud. We’ve been told by experts: “Prevention is better than cure.”

We don’t have to wait for our health to turn bad, before we start adopting healthful ways. Most ailments are preventable, experts say, including cancer. Where it has already occurred, arresting the cancer early on can make a great difference for its successful treatment.

There’s the acronym CAUTION US of what we can do for early cancer detection: C – change in bowel or bladder habits, A – a sore that does not heal, U – unusual bleeding or discharge, T – thickening or lump in the breast or elsewhere in the body, I – indigestion or difficulty of swallowing, O – obvious changes in wart or mole, N – nagging cough or hoarseness in the throat, U – unexplained anaemia or paleness, S – sudden unexplained weight loss. When any of these signs are noticed, it is advisable to see a doctor.

We must not be unduly alarmed though, seeing a doctor is simply to seek expert opinion. For example, a nagging cough may turn out to be simply caused by some environmental pollutants that can be easily solved by common medicine and improved sanitation in one’s surroundings. The point of seeing the doctor is giving our body the attention it deserves.