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Posted by Diane C.-TX on 5/20/2008, 2:50 pm, in reply to "Re: Hi Deanna.............................................................."
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Palliative care is a kind of care for a person who has an illness that does not go away and often gets worse over time. It is different from care to cure your illness, called curative treatment. Palliative care focuses on improving your quality of life—not just in your body, but also in your mind and spirit. Sometimes palliative care is combined with curative treatment. The kind of care your mom will receive will depend on what she needs (symptom management) and her goals will guide her care. Palliative care can help reduce pain or treatment side effects. Palliative care may help you and your mom better understand her illness, talk more openly about her feelings, or decide what treatment she wants or does not want. Palliative care is no longer just for people who are near death. In the past, palliative care was mostly used to treat people on hospice care. Hospice is a type of palliative care for people who are in their final weeks or months of life. Today, palliative care can help anyone who has an illness that may get worse over time. For example, you may want palliative care while you are getting treatment for heart failure. Palliative care could help you manage symptoms or side effects of treatment so that you will feel better. Since your mom is currently asymptomatic (i.e. not having breathing problems), and her oncologist knows that her tumors are responsive to the xeloda, she has a better chance of controlling any airway issues because the xeloda will go inside only the malignant cells and convert to 5-FU to halt the progression at that level. Cancer drugs do not quite follow the same pattern as regular drugs. For example, using an antibiotic when you have no symptoms of an infection may actually cause your body to no longer react appropriately when the antibiotic is later used when there is an actual infection to treat. Xeloda, used alone, is currently showing better progress used as a "second line" treatment for metastatic breast cancer that was previously treated systemically. If your mom was treated at the cancer center where I currently work, I feel we would be doing the same thing. We always give our patients several options, including "comfort measures only". Your mother has the final say so in any treatment she receives and if there is any concern of her becoming incapable of making decisions, the time is "now" to sign a durable medical power of decision making to someone she knows will carry out her wishes. Please keep us posted on how both you and your mom are doing. Love, Di
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