What is Immune Thrombocytopenia?

 Platelets are cells that circulate in the blood to block up leaks in the blood vessels, and prevent bleeding. They are produced in the bone marrow, and the circulating count should be in the range of 150,000 to 450,000.

 ITP or Immune Thrombocytopenia is an autoimmune condition,

MDS, or Myelodysplastic Syndrome is a malfunction of the Bone Marrow. The Bone Marrow is the factory where normal blood cell production takes place in an orderly fashion. Blood cells include White Blood Cells (WBCs), Red Blood Cells (RBCs) and Platelets. These start as stem cells, and pass through a stepwise, orderly maturation process to the final product. MDS produces a varying degree of malfunction, resulting in low blood count numbers.

Screening, diagnosis and treatment options remain controversial, because the disease mostly behaves indolently in the older age group. The value of screening in terms of saving lives has not been fully established. Autopsy series show that 60 % of men will develop prostate cancer over time. Does finding and treating it early come at great cost, without significant benefit?

What is brachytherapy?
It is a way of delivering radiation therapy in a very targeted fashion to a tumor site, minimizing radiation to the surrounding area. It has mainly been used thus far in delivering curative doses of radiation to the prostate gland and the female cervix, when disease is localized to the area.

Do I need a feeding tube?
Only in specific circumstances. For most cancers, where the normal path of feeding is intact, and patients can eat and drink by mouth, it is not necessary. Even if you don't have an appetite or taste for regular food, or are hindered by nausea, your food intake can be supplemented by supplement drinks, ice cream and puddings. 

How to control nausea?
Nausea is one of the most feared side effects of chemotherapy. There is no doubt that it is one of the most uncomfortable sensations that people experience. However, we have come a long way since the days when chemotherapy initially made its way into common usage. We are better able to predict which drugs are the worse culprits, and are better able to control it. There are many components to the causes of nausea:

Should I take Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after menopause?

The answer has shifted from “Yes” 20 years ago, to “if you have to” as information from studies continues to roll in. The Yes answer was in response to the problem of osteoporosis, and heart disease, as well as the perceived improvement in postmenopausal symptoms. The “if you have to” answer evolved as incidence of strokes and heart attacks increased, along with breast and uterus cancer rates. There was minimal improvement in sleep disturbance scores, quality of life and functional scores, and osteoporosis.

Why did my cancer treatment make me so tired?

This is called Cancer Related Fatigue or CRF, and is now a recognized condition. It can persist for months to years after completing treatment.

Fatigue is probably the most common complaint of cancer and its treatments. It has been attributed to many different factors, and is a subject of ongoing research.

Does my elderly mother need to know?

‘I don’t want to tell my mother she has cancer. She’s old. It would devastate her.’ We want to protect our children from life’s ugliness when they are little, and we want to protect our sick and elderly parents from the ugly truth of their mortality.

What is hemoglobin? (or Hb, or Hgb).

When people get a test for anemia, it contains a number for the Hemoglobin and another number for Red blood cells. A decrease in those numbers leads to a diagnosis of anemia.

Should I exercise during cancer treatments?

As much as you can. Going through cancer treatment is no reason to give up on exercise. In fact, now is the time to keep up regularly with moderate and appropriate exercise. Obviously, it needs to be modified to what surgery you have undergone. Abdominal crunches would not be appropriate after an abdominal operation, and a weight bench would not be appropriate after a breast operation.

What is 5-year survival?

Why has that become a significant number? It has become a benchmark to measure a treatment’s success. When someone undergoes curative treatment, for various reasons addressed earlier, a fraction of those will eventually relapse. “Adjuvant” treatments are designed to decrease the relapse rate, and hence, increase the cure rate.