Terminal cancer Archives

Tag: Terminal cancer

Terminal cancer refers to cancer that can’t be cured or treated. It’s sometimes also called end-stage cancer. Any type of cancer can become terminal cancer. Terminal cancer is different from advanced cancer. Like terminal cancer, advanced cancer isn’t curable. But it does respond to treatment, which may slow down its progression. Terminal cancer doesn’t respond to treatment. As a result, treating terminal cancer focuses on making someone as comfortable as possible (e.g. hospice or end of life care

Generally, terminal cancer shortens someone’s life expectancy. But someone’s actual life expectancy depends on several factors, including:

the type of cancer they have
their overall health
whether they have any other health conditions

Doctors often rely on a mixture of clinical experience and intuition when determining someone’s life expectancy. But studies suggest that this estimate is usually incorrect and overly optimistic.

To help combat this, researchers and doctors have come up with several sets of guidelines to help oncologists and palliative care doctors give people a more realistic idea of their life expectancy. Examples of these guidelines include:

Karnofsky performance scale. This scale helps doctors evaluate someone’s overall level of functioning, including their ability to do daily activities and care for themselves. The score is given as a percentage. The lower the score, the shorter the life expectancy.
Palliative prognostic score. This uses someone’s score on the Karnofsky performance scale, white blood cell and lymphocyte counts, and other factors to produce a score between 0 and 17.5. The higher the score, the shorter the life expectancy.

While these estimates aren’t always accurate, they do serve an important purpose. They can help people and their doctors make decisions, establish goals, and work toward end-of-life plans.

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Don’t believe the hype – Neuroendocrine Cancer Myths debunked

By Ronny Allan Feb 16, 2025 2 Comments

Awareness, Inspiration, Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer, Patient Advocacy, Survivorship, TreatmentAdvanced neuroendocrine cancer, Cancer grading, Cancer staging, Ga68 PET/CT, Incurable cancer, Lanreotide, Low Grade NETs, Metastatic Neuroendocrine Cancer, Neuroendocrine cancer, Neuroendocrine carcinoma (NEC), Neuroendocrine tumour (NET), Palliative care, Palliative treatment, Prognosis, Quality of LIfe (QoL), Somatostatin analogues, Surgery, Terminal cancer

Metastatic Neuroendocrine Tumours – Incurable but treatable

By Ronny Allan Jun 17, 2024 23 Comments

Metastatic Neuroendocrine Tumours - incurable is not untreatable. When I was being officially told I had advanced and incurable cancer, I did what most people seem to do on films/TV ..... I asked "how long do I have". The Oncologist started off with the worst case and that must have been quite a shock because for a few moments after that, I heard nothing - my brain was clearly still trying to process those words - I wasn't even feeling unwell! The really important bit I missed was him go on to say "...but with the right treatment, you should be able…

Awareness, Patient AdvocacyAdvanced neuroendocrine cancer, Incurable cancer, Palliative care, Terminal cancer

Metastatic Neuroendocrine Cancer: Incurable isn’t always terminal

By Ronny Allan Nov 27, 2022 5 Comments

OpinionWords are importantI was diagnosed with stage IV cancer in 2010. OK, it wasn't a really aggressive type, but it had caused a lot of damage. It's amazing to think that someone is still adding to their stage IV cancer story since diagnosis of "incurable cancer". You can read a chronological list of what happened to me and what treatment I had (and still get) by clicking here. So, am I terminal? No, in my opinion, and by any stretch of the imagination, someone who has lived with stage IV cancer for 13 years (2023) cannot be considered terminal. Let's look…