Saddest thing I've seen in a while. Look at all 31 pics.

[chiza]

I'm thinking we need them yearly.

As good as it sounds, this will never happen. At least not anytime soon.

MRI is still fairly expensive, and doing full body scans will drive up health care costs to unbelievable levels. No one would be able to afford health care.

In addition, it can't tell you if it's cancer or not. Incidentalomas are extremely common and majority are benign. Do you want surgery on things that are benign? Think about this from the doctors perspective - First, do no harm. Even if you didn't do surgery, and you just wanted to try and diagnose it with a biopsy, there are still risks.

This is why medicine has cancer screening tests for individual organ systems. Yearly mammograms/ultrasound for women > 30. Colonoscopy every 10 years for everyone > 50. Pap smears every 3/5 years for women. We are likely going to start doing CTs for lung cancer (most common cancer by far). People with increased risk will get checked sooner and more often.

Not all screening tests are perfect (PSA) nor do we have any for some organ systems (renal, endometrial, ovarian). But it's getting better. Cervical cancer has plummeted in the era of the pap smear. Cancer sucks. But there's hope.

 

[Krazy4Real]

Sad to see.

 

[Platypus]

cancer is a bitch, not much else to say.

 

[LTC8K6]

Heartbreaking.

 

[TridenT]

No feels.

 

[SKORPI0]

Heartbreaking indeed..... :'(

Book writing about it and non-profit organization (TLYS) started by the husband.


The Battle We Didn't Choose My wife's fight with breast cancer

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Lost a good friend to leukemia. She went from going to the doctor with cold like symptoms/fatigue to gone in 2 years.

She was 22 at the end. Such a gorgeous girl gone in the prime of her life.

 

[RedRooster]

I thought all that stem cell replacement stuff was working pretty well if you were brave enough to try an "experimental" procedure? Chemo sounds like hell enough with such a pitifully low success rate, that it'd almost be worth rolling the dice with some crazy new treatment, wouldn't it? Just miserable either way, such a terrible terrible disease.

 

[Ns1]

cancer is the new old age.

 

[Sonikku]

I rode in a car once with a guy who said he worked with acids for commodore. The hazmat pay was generous, as was the retirement. When given the option for retirement in installments or in one lump sum he took the lump sum and became a millionaire. He said he considered himself to be rich, so he never bothered with health insurance. Then his wife got cancer and spent his entire retirement of 3 something million dollars only to lose her anyway. It was at that moment I realized why there was no progress in developing effective countermeasures to cancer and likely never would be. It's just too profitable.

 

[Gunbuster]

It's truly horrifying. Fvcking chemo.

I consider it bordering on medieval. I've got a super Idea! Lets poison people and hope the cancer dies from it before they do.

 

[PowerYoga]

I rode in a car once with a guy who said he worked with acids for commodore. The hazmat pay was generous, as was the retirement. When given the option for retirement in installments or in one lump sum he took the lump sum and became a millionaire. He said he considered himself to be rich, so he never bothered with health insurance. Then his wife got cancer and spent his entire retirement of 3 something million dollars only to lose her anyway. It was at that moment I realized why there was no progress in developing effective countermeasures to cancer and likely never would be. It's just too profitable.

Sorry, that's just bullshit. Cancer is hard to treat because of the rapid rate of mutation and the number of causes that leads to uncontrolled cellular growth. It's not just one type of mutation that causes it, for example breast cancer is caused by BRCA1 and 2 (or the losing of them) and you can lose these genes at any point in your life through regular cellular mutation, whereas pancreatic cancer isn't even related to those specific protector genes. The only way to completely cure cancer would be through gene therapy, which does not exist in an applicable form in today's modern medical science.

It's not because of your conspiracy theory crap of "oh its too profitable."

 

[Ns1]

source blog btw:

http://mywifesfightwithbreastcancer.com/

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Sister battled breast cancer and won, her daughter is going through that same war right now, and I am hoping against hope that she beats the piss out of it. She's too fucking young to have cancer. She's still my little niece, toddling down the driveway, laughing, smiling.
I really wish we could get a stranglehold on cancer, it just rips too many families apart and takes down too many good people.

 

[Imp]

Youngest person I knew (of) was a 26 year old one year ahead of me in undergrad. I honestly didn't care for him then, but was surprised to just see him go like that and so quickly.

 

[OutHouse]

My grandfather died of cancer in 1978. My other grandfather died of cancer in 1985, followed by grandmothers dying of cancer in 2001 and 2004. My dad died of cancer in 2006. All of the men were fairly young (none reached 70 and only one even made it over 65).

You'd think that in the past 35 years, we would've achieved major victories against cancer. I'm sure a doctor or med student here will tell me we have, but from my vantage point, I still see so many young people dying from it every year. Early detection seems to be your main hope of survival and in the 21st century, I expected we'd be further along.

For those of you who have read my posts where I speak about living in the present and not sacrificing everything now in hopes of a great retirement, this is where I'm coming from. Your retirement may never come, so try to balance your retirement planning with living a fulfilling life now. You may never get the chance to meet your goals later.

when was the last time a disease was cured?

and i 100% agree with your last paragraph.

 

[GundamW]

Here is another heart breaking set of photos that got the Pulitzer Prize:
http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/8358


Fuck cancer.

 

[Maximilian]

Fuck you OP :'(