While quite often a month is dedicated towards fighting a particular cancer or raising awareness about it, the month of June focuses more on those most forgotten, the cancer survivors. Those that live to tale the tale.
Honoring the Unsung Heroes: Cancer Survivors
The sheer presence of a cancer survivor is testament to the fact that cancers can be defeated, but as well emphasizes the cost, both financial and material, as well as physical or bodily sacrifice that are needed to beat cancer. This could be a major surgical procedure, impairment of a particular physiological system, among others of which the main aim is to improve chances of survival with the patient’s quality of life in mind.
It is with this background that a month is dedicated to the survivors, their existence is an inspiration to the oncology care providers to soldier on in the fight against cancer, it makes the fight worthwhile. They are also inspiration to patients out there still battling cancer, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Beyond Survival: The Lingering Challenges Survivors Face
However, it is not enough to simply draw inspiration from them, we ought to use their experiences as a guide to better optimize cancer care. We need to recognize as well that coupled with the physical bodily costs of surviving cancer, survivors have to sometimes grapple with irreversible damage or injury incurred due to the disease or as part of the treatment modalities, and sometimes these may be severe and debilitating, affecting their social life forever.
June is therefore the rare opportunity once more that the cancer healthcare system needs, to recognize the special challenges that cancer survivors face and find workable ways of mitigating these. Be it psycho-social support or otherwise, cancer survivors are in continuous need of the rest of us to be their bedrock because only we may understand the challenges they face.
Voices That Matter: The Power of Survivors’ Stories
Away from the challenges, survivors are needed more in the oncology support spaces and should be encouraged to share their stories more and more to shine light upon what quite often is a grim situation. With this, we might have health seeking behaviour of our population improve, routine screenings done more and subsequently be able to diagnose patients in earlier stages of the disease. This would be simply a result of cancer survivors demystifying the cancer journey to the general population.
This June, we shall celebrate the survivors, we shall honor the fallen and encourage those still in the thick of the battle.
Article written by: Hadad Dauda (3rcc Pharmacy team member)