Thinking Citizen Blog — Cancer (Part Three) — The Stages of Cancer, US And Global Death Rates
Thinking Citizen Blog: Thursday is Health, Health Care, and Global Health Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Cancer (Part Three) — the Stages of Cancer, US and Global Death Rates
In Part One, a little terminology (eg. sarcomas versus carcinomas, primary versus metastatic, and benign and malIgnant “omas” (eg. adenomas versus lypmohomas).
In Part Two, a few notes on physical, chemical, and biological causes of cancer.
Today, the stages of a cancer and a statistical breakdown of cancer deaths in the US and globally.
What have you learned in your life about cancer that the rest of us probably should know but might well not?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THE “INITIATION” PHASE CAN BE STABLE AND UNDETECTED FOR MONTHS OR YEARS
1. Stage 0: abnormal cells, growing in their normal place.
2. Stage 1: “localized to one part of the body. Can be surgically removed if small enough.”
3. Stage 2: “locally advanced” — “can be treated by chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery.”
NB: Stage 3: “cancers are also locally advanced. Whether a cancer is designated as Stage II or Stage III can depend on the specific type of cancer; for example, in Hodgkin’s Disease, Stage II indicates affected lymph nodes on only one side of the diaphragm, whereas Stage III indicates affected lymph nodes above and below the diaphragm. The specific criteria for Stages II and III therefore differ according to diagnosis. Stage III can be treated by chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery.
Stage 4: “cancers have often metastasized or spread to other organs or throughout the body. Stage IV cancer can be treated by chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery. Despite treatment, a patient’s mortality rate can be significantly higher with Stage IV cancer, e.g., the cancer can progress to become terminal.”
US CANCER DEATHS — MEN VERSUS WOMEN
1. US cancer death rates have fallen 33% since 1991 as a result of advances in treatment, early diagnosis and less smoking.
2. “The largest declines in cancer death rates in the United States have occurred in the South along the East Coast and the southern border. In contrast, the smallest declines have been in the Midwest and Appalachia.” (Google generative AI)
GLOBAL DEATH RATES
1. Lung cancer kills about 1.8 million per year.
2. Colorectal cancer: 916,000 per year.
3. Liver cancer: 830,000 per year.
NB: Breast cancer 685,000 per year.
The cancer with the lowest five year survival rate is pancreatic cancer at 10%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer
Cancer survival rates — Wikipedia
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the most interesting thing you learned in the last week related to health, health care or health care policy — the ethics, economics, politics, history….
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to health are or health care policy that the rest of us may have missed.
Or just some random health-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make someone’s day. Or to cement in your mind something really important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that matters.
