1. CANCER IS A WORD NOT A SENTENCE
WHAT YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CANCER
DR ROBERT BUCKMAN
Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto

2. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
This cannot be happening to me

3. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
Fear often produces a sense of paralysis, with diminished coping strategies
Fear of the generalities may inhibit comprehension and coping with the specifics

4. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
Why are we SO
afraid of cancer?
Why is the word so dreaded and awful even when the sentence is light?

5. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
‘Cancer’ is not one single disease
The cancers comprise a group of diseases
The 200 different diseases have the same process in common(and often nothing else)
There is a wide spectrum of prognosis
Understanding palliates paralysis

6. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
Why ‘alien’ invasion
If perceived as single disease, that disease is clever and highly unpredictable
Primeval fear of something growing inside

7. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
“It used to be rare....”
Cancers account for 25% of all deaths
Not talked about before (epidemic of silence-breaking, not disease)
Most cancers are not inherited (very few ‘doomed families’)

8. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
Mysteries:
Site of metastases
Angiogenesis
Markers of biological behaviour
Effect of removal of primary

9. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
Cancer as metaphor
Attitude as a cause
Attitude as predictor of survival
Part of “blaming the patient’

10. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
“Why is the treatment so awful?”
Cancer cells differ minimally from normal
Systemic treatment targets all growing cells

11. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
“With so many breakthroughs, how come there’s no progress?”
Advances in understanding not the same as progress in treatment
Collaborative optimism
Public relations

12. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
Complementary remedies:
Difference between getting better and feeling better
“Not what you do, but how you do it”

13. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
“ the more you understand about something you are afraid of, the easier it is to cope with it ”

14. What You Really Need to Know About the Cancers
For more information on the books “CANCER IS A WORD NOT A SENTENCE” and “WHAT YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CANCER”
(Both published by Key Porter books) you can visit :
cinemedic.com