Is There a Time When A Cancer Patient Can Stop Worrying About Recurrence?

There are 3 words that can really scare someone – you’ve got cancer!

So, after the diagnosis, you may decide to go through traditional, non-traditional treatments, or some combination of the two. You go through these traditional and/or non-traditional treatments. You’re successful and you’re declared cancer free.

You also know that going 5 years without a reoccurrence is a very, very good thing, but what you don’t know is can you at some point let go of that thought that the cancer may come back, and you can simply stop worrying. 

Well, researchers have looked at exactly that! In the study they tracked 13,556 men and 29,448 women. They tracked the men for 30 years and the women for 35 years.

The researchers tracked common cancers, such as, lung, colon, bladder, uterus, breast, melanoma and thyroid. The death rates within 10 years after diagnosis ranged from a high of 80% for people with lung cancer to a low of 3% for women with thyroid cancer.

Here’s the interesting part, if the person lived longer than 10 years after their original diagnosis, the person was unlikely to die from that cancer. 

So, this study gives the person the ability, after 10 years, to really say that they are cancer free! If you get to say it, don’t forget to celebrate it!

(Reported Nutrition Action, July/August 2022)