| |
| |
![]() |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
Before she was diagnosed with third stage breast cancer, Mrs Rietta Tan lived with a lump in her right breast for three years without giving it much thought.
After all, a mammogram she had gone for previously had not picked up anything unusual.
Although she felt the pea-sized lump growing bigger over the subsequent months, she did not seek further medical advice.
By the time she finally went to a doctor, the symptoms were alarming: The lump had already grown to the size of a “large fishball”, her weight had plummeted and she felt lethargic all the time.
Explaining why she had dragged her feet in seeking medical advice, the51-year-old breast cancer survivor said: “Like many cancer victims, I didn’t expect it to be cancer. So, I kept procrastinating and postponing my checkups.”
Mrs Tan’s reason for delaying medical advice is not unusual among cancer patients. Procrastination is one of the main reasons why people delay cancer diagnoses, according to a recent report from the Tower Cancer Research Foundation in Los Angeles.
The report found that more than half of the 500 cancer survivors surveyed delayed seeking treatment for two months or more despite having symptoms of the disease.
Of the 500 patients, 15 per cent waited one to five years after their symptoms appeared before seeking medical advice while a third said it was procrastination that delayed their diagnosis.
Interestingly, 13 per cent delayed medical advice because they were afraid of what their doctors might find.
Such irrational thoughts are not all that uncommon among Singaporeans too, Prof Soo Khee Chee, director of the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS), told TODAY.
“The word ‘cancer’ can evoke irrational behaviour and strike fear in people. There is often a strong denial element people don’t want to know if they have cancer. They’re afraid to know that theirs might be a hopeless case,” said Prof Soo, who spoke about the importance of early cancer detection at the Health in the Heartlands carnival last month.
The event was organised by NCCS to educate heartlanders on how to combat cancer, a top killer disease here.
Lack of proactive measures means that cancer patients are often diagnosed in the more advanced stages Prof Soo estimated that at least 70 per cent of cancer cases are diagnosed in the third and fourth stages, when the disease becomes trickier to treat.
In fact, diagnoses in the early stages are so uncommon that doctors “are always pleasantly surprised when we see a patient with stage one or two cancer,” added Prof Soo.
According to Dr Benjamin Ng, occupational physician at Raffles Medical’s Health Screeners, most cancers usually respond better to treatment when detected in the early stages.
Depending on the type of cancer, the survival rate for early stage cancer (between 80 and 90 per cent for stage one cancer; 60 to 80 per cent for stage two cancer) is also comparatively higher than in the advanced stages.
In early cancer, patients also go through “less debilitating” treatments with less side effects, said Prof Soo.
To treat her advanced-stage breast cancer, Mrs Tan had to go through a mastectomy, followed by a gruelling, painful treatment of eight cycles of chemotherapy and 25 radiation sessions something which could have been prevented had she detected the cancer much earlier.
“If I had removed the pea-sized lump when I had first detected it, I wouldn’t have had to go through all that,” she said, wistfully.
But doctors whom we spoke to say that looking out for cancer symptoms is not always a reliable way of detecting early cancer. Regular cancer screening is the most reliable way of nipping the disease in the bud, said Dr Ng.
He explained that this is because many cancers such as lung, brain, stomach, colon and liver cancer do not display obvious symptoms until the advanced stages.
Homemaker Mdm Merle McIntyre, who managed to nip breast cancer in the bud even before it got to the first stage, stressed the importance of early cancer detection.
A routine mammogram examination in 2004 found some microcalcifications tiny specks of mineral deposits in her breasts. The tiny lumpy tissues were quickly removed to prevent them turning cancerous.
Said the 53-year-old, who has a family history of breast cancer: “My mother had breast cancer. So, we saw the importance of screening. I think the scenario would have been very different if those lumps had not been detected early.” - TODAY/ar
|
