A Matter of Semantics

September 22, 2010

Scott Capozza, MS, PT

Recently, there was an article in Newsweek talking about ‘curable cancers’.  The article interviewed a testicular cancer survivor and said, I’m paraphrasing here, that he was “lucky” to have had testicular cancer because the cure rate is so high.  The article further went on to discuss how scientists are trying to apply what works against the more ‘curable’ cancers (like ALL, the most common form of pediatric leukemia, which has a cure rate of 90%) and applying that technology to fight the ‘less curable’ cancers, such as lung and liver cancer.  The article essentially says that those of us who had the “curable” cancers had the “good” cancers.

Really?  There’s such a thing as a good cancer?!

I’m usually a glass-half-full kind of guy, almost to the point of annoying my friends as I try to see the positive in most situations, but this article made me stop and think.  Am I truly cured?  It has been almost 12 years since I was diagnosed with Stage II testicular cancer.  I have always been a good patient.  Well, at least with my oncologist; (more on that in another post), going for every check-up, blood draw, CT scan, whatever he needed.  We got to the point where, after a check-up, if there was nothing to report, then he wouldn’t call me.  No news is good news.  I can’t say that I live in fear that the cancer will come back; I don’t sleep with one eye open every night wondering if there’s one rogue cancer cell hiding out, the one that got away from the surgeries and chemo, waiting to come back with a vengeance.

And yet...

I know enough about my disease and the treatments I received to know that a) because I had cancer, my risk of developing another cancer automatically doubles, and b) I specifically am at a higher risk of developing leukemia because of the type of chemo I was on.  Again, I can’t say that I am just waiting around to get cancer again, but still, it’s something I keep in the back of my mind.

And that’s only concerning what can happen to me physically.

Almost five years from my date of diagnosis, I received a phone call from my younger brother.  I’ll never forget it: I was getting ready to go out and meet friends for dinner on a Friday night, and my brother calls me and asks me all these very specific questions about the symptoms I had.  “Why are you asking me all this?” I asked him.  “Because I was just diagnosed with testicular cancer too,” he tells me. 

The wind was completely knocked out of me when I heard this.  The five year mark is the ‘magical’ mark, if you make it five years without a recurrence then your chances of getting cancer again dip into the less than one percent category.  I was all set to celebrate...then it comes back and goes after my brother.  I thought I was done with cancer...then I wasn’t.

Thankfully, he learned a thing or two from watching me go through my diagnosis and treatments.  As soon as he discovered symptoms, he went to the doctor, and the diagnosis was made.  He had one surgery, and that was it; the cancer never had time to spread like it did in me.  He’s moved on and has never looked back.

Then, this past spring, cancer came back again...but this time, it was my dad.  He was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  Again, it was caught early, he had surgery, and that was it.  He took some time off from work to recover, but he didn’t have to undergo radiation therapy.

Which brings me back to the Newsweek article.  Am I truly cured of cancer?  I don’t know.  I’m probably cured in the physical sense; I doubt that the cancer cells will come back and attack my own body after all these years.  However, cancer always seems to be around; it is pervasive in all aspects of my life.  Emotionally, I’m not cured from cancer when I find out that one of my former campers from Camp Rising Sun has had a relapse.  Spiritually, I’m not cured of cancer when my college roommate calls me to tell me that his wife, the mother of their three young kids, has Stage III ovarian cancer.  I don’t know if, on a deeper level, I will ever be cured from cancer until there is a cure for all cancers.    

Am I cured?  I guess it’s a matter of semantics.

[link to Newsweek article: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/07/what-we-can-learn-from-curable-cancers.html?GT1=43002 ]

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