Re: Should we remove a left kidney with a tumor if pulmonary lymph nodes are enlarged?

From: Peter Moran (moringa_at_gil.com.au)
Date: 11/17/04 

Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 05:42:58 +1000

"Mary Fisher" <mary.fisher@zetnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:419b2784$0$2652$4c56ba96@master.news.zetnet.net...
>
> "Steph" <steph@vancouver.island> wrote in message
> news:NQymd.240839$%k.178180@pd7tw2no...
>>
>>>
>>
>> I think it's important to distinguish between a "remission" (which is
>> meaningless) and a "complete remission" which MAY be meaningful
>
> AH! Someone else with the same feeling as me :-)
>
> I'm always being asked if I'm in remission. I say that I don't know what
> that means.

Yes, words are often used so loosely.. "In remission" should only apply to
very serious, mainly widespread, cancers which have responded well to
treatment, but are regarded as still a major threat.

>It's not quite as daft as 'cure' or 'in the clear' but on the same lines.

I don't think "cure" and :"in the clear" are daft, in the right context.
You are to all intents and purposes cured of colon, and some other cancers,
if you are alive and free of cancer five years after treatment. Not so
with others, such as breast or melanoma, which can crop up (with
ever-decreasing frequency) after many more years. After, say twenty years,
survivors with those are approaching 100% certainty that they are "cured".

Also, about fifty per cent of cancers overall are "cured" permanently, with
the overall mortality rate of cancer running at about half that of its
incidence.

Peter Moran

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