Being a Cancer Fellow myself, I find this report quite informative and it may provide us with some different perspective in looking at Cancer. Using this year's report, allow me to share some of my thoughts with you.
1) An estimated 173,800 new cases of cancer and 76,200 deaths in cancer will occur in Canada in 2010: In other words, if your doctor, like me, told you that you got cancer this year, you are ONLY one out of the 173,800 new cases of cancer. Some people like to describe having a cancer is like winning a lottery (say 6-49), by reading this number, you would immediately awake that this is overly exaggerated as there can't be 173,800 person winning a lottery in 2010! You may even start to see having a cancer is an ordinary thing. Then, on the 76,200 death in cancer, this is about 30% of total death (29% to be precise) in Canada. In other words, 3 out of 10 people will die of cancer in 2010. If anything to make you think you are unique, no doubt about that! If anything to make you think your death are unique, you may need to re-think again as if you are going to die because of cancer, in 2010, there are at least 76,200 other people will die of same reason, i.e. cancer. So, why bother about the uniqueness of your way of death. Rather, I would spend more time in improving my quality of life before my death! Keep in mind, I am still as unique as I am thinking about myself!
2) Different kind of cancer: In Page 13 & 14 of the report, you would see the classification of different type of cancers, for new cases as well as for death. It shows 24 different types. Lung, Colorectal, prostate and breast are among the highest, and they together accounted for >50% of cancer cases. Lung cancer remains the one with highest death rate. (*I am lung cancer Stage IV.) We need to pay special attention that all these 24 types of cancer are different, and their treatment methods and behavior are also different, some actually very different. For the general public who has not encountered cancer before, they thought cancer is cancer, but for those like myself, we would notice that even for Lung Cancer, there are sub-types, and the cancer cell types are different, some very different. Once again, the important point here is due their differences, the treatment approaches/methods are also different. We cannot see cancer as one cancer, and we need to deal with it as individual cases! For same reason, the sharing of one cancer patient with a different type of cancer may not be that useful as another cancer patient with a different type of cancer would have very different reaction to similar treatment, and sometime the information can be contradicting and even frustrating.
3) The End-Of-Life Services: It is good that this year's topic is on End-Of-Life services and it is rather clear that "services are inadequate to allow individuals to die at home when that is their preference, palliative care services are being used insufficiently and families bear substantial psychological and financial burdens". This shall provide our politicians, community policy makers, managers in related organizations, cancer patients and their families and friends, if all added up into a significant number as well as a big group of service users, to start working in this direction. Not only to provide appropriate services to those who needed most, but to expand and to educate the general public regarding death & dying and how to deal and manage the process of their End-Of-Life, to make it more meaningful and enjoyable, or at least less stressful. If any researchers who are interested in this subject, they may even be able to convert the above into a quantitative research and should not be difficult to find out that if we can transform this End-Of-Life process from destructive to constructive, from a suffering to a enjoyable process, then the community as a whole will benefit from it. It's a win-win-win scenario!
We are all going to die (one day sooner or later) and if we know how to make this End-Of-Life process enjoyable, we are not only helping ourselves, but helping EVERYONE!
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