Chronic cancer is the way oncologists have to call that cancer that is not cured, which follows like a Damocles sword about patients, but with which you can live with a good quality of life a variable number of years, butalways tend to grow.
Clinical trials, studies of new drugs in which the most expert hospitals participate, follow each other in continuous acceleration.That is one of the keys to chronification: when the tumor that has been tried.
New molecules, new approaches, new indications to prove.What was previously a lottery, the possibility of participating in an essay, is now colloquial language among veterans who occasionally have their controlled disease, occasionally.
One Two Three.Most oncology chronicles have several episodes to tell, different moments of a cancer with which they live even if they do not feel sick.They have not just got used, concern always appears, an immense restlessness.But they also know that you can almost always try.Let's see.
The oncologists of the Hospital del Mar proposed to three of their veteran patients explain their experience in these pages.They are very different in expectations, in previous experience, in sequelae of the disease.But they have in common the achievement of living almost as if nothing happens.
They live with their doctors.They know a lot about consequences of treatments, to negotiate their independence, of full but very informed trust.They don't know how long they will last.The expected survival percentages that have been explained in the consultation have sometimes exceeded them.Their lives are composed of grandchildren, friends, travel, work, walks, home tasks and, of course, resonances, analysis, periodic visits to their oncologist.
"In the waiting room there are more and more repeaters," says lung oncologist Edurne Arriola."Most treatments are now individualized and directed," says Mama María Martínez expert.“Half of our follicular lymphomas live more than 17.7 years.It is the chronic cancer paradigm, ”says hematologist Antonio Salar.
Eulogio Magino.Three treatments of its lung cancer since 2013
"I know what I have, but I'm not a sick"
I have fattened, ”acknowledges Eulogio Magino, 72, with some concern.All the life of a commercial, with a truck, with a car, "how beautiful is the street and deal with people".
He lives since 2013 with a diagnosis that until recently was synonymous with near death.A large lung tumor that could not be operated because their lungs were very touched by tobacco.It was a squamous carcinoma.For cigarettes.But he has spliced three treatments every time he has grown again and now spends every 15 days through the Hospital del Mar for his controls and immunotherapy.“A dropper that lasted 6 hours before and now does not pass an hour and a half.When we want to go to the town's parties, we negotiate ".And Pilar, his wife, acknowledges that that does not plan to get off: on August 15 they will always find them at the Molina Embid Festivities, Guadalajara province.
His pulmonary history so linked to tobacco began with a damn stain that was seen in company reviews."But I got wrong just when they retired at 60," he remembers annoying.Because yours liked it a lot.
One day he drowned more than the account and diagnosed him.It has gone through chemotherapy, which had "a good answer," clarifies the ancologist expert in Edurne Arriola lung.In May 2015 the tumor progressed again and another chemo began.It stabilized, and in April of the following year it grew again.Immunotherapy began then - a treatment approved just two years ago and that was first used in the sea with Eulogio - and has been 20 months, “with the intention of continuing.I am not a sick.I am aware that I have this and I have to continue ”.
His life runs almost every time with Pilar.They buy together, they eat together, together they have taken care of Clara, their granddaughter, who has started the nursery."Retiree centers never called me.They don't go, ”he clarifies.So every day in the morning “walk at my pace.If I have to go quickly, I'm missing lungs, ”he explains.But no one takes away the hour and a half of walk, almost two."Except cold, humidity and wind.Look that bothers me the air conditioning of the super ”.
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It has also bothered a hernia.72 -year things.“I think mine fit him better because I knew what was happening.I have confidence, but it depends on the doctor to explain it to you, and how ".
Justi Cerrato.Advanced breast tumor with metastasis for 6 years
"I still do nothing to me"
Its breast tumor debuted with metastasis included: a stage 4, the most advanced, HER2 subtype, such as 20% of breast cancers, and with bone metastasis.Justi Cerrato, who is now 53 years old, faced a much more complicated panorama six years ago than usual in a breast tumor.No one could tell him this is nothing, now almost all heal.His was more complicated.That is why it is included in what oncologists catalog like chronic cancer, an undoubtedly threatening reality with which to live.
He was lucky that a clinical study was underway with a drug - which is now approved - with an anti her2 molecule."The answer was spectacular," says oncologist María Martínez, an expert in breast tumors and clinical trials.
He received this treatment for three years, because there was no experience with him, he was under study and did not know how long he had to last.He tolerated it very well, and the result allowed him to operate from breast after those three years and also radiate the bone where metastasis had appeared.
Now there is no tumor, and prefers a hormonal maintenance treatment, “to prevent a relapse, although they don't know how long I will have to follow.There is no experience ".Justi wanted to recover the maximum normality and not spend every 21 days passing through the Hospital del Mar and follow the strict controls of a treatment under study."I chose this option among the three that proposed me".
"While I did the treatment I interrupted the work.Nine months.Then I stopped when they did the mastectomy.Then, by reconstruction.And for radiotherapy.Four casualties.I was very lucky, they gave me all the facilities at work.They understood me very well.I had no vomiting or lost hair, but I was continuously here and I didn't feel one hundred percent.On the other hand, I went well to concentrate on me.But I already wanted to return to normal life ".
During that parenthesis he was going to walk, he was more with his mother, "that helped me a lot," enjoyed the family people out of season, "another way of seeing it, another landscape".But I wanted to recover active life.Now he sees his oncologist every six months.Study the possibility of placing a new prosthesis that removes current discomfort (he has had enough problems with the reconstruction of his chest) and remains linked to the hospital and doctors.“But I work as before, I travel everything I can, I walk a lot, I also do pilates.I still do nothing to me ".
He insists that she trusts her doctors and if one day they propose a change, she will surely agree.
"The most difficult thing I think was the first news.I don't like people who feel compassion for me.It does not help the least.But telling it has served me ".Remember the weight of uncertainty.But lives "step by step.I don't feel sick ".
Marina García.Follicular lymphoma for 20 years
"What I fear is that the brio is over"
In 1997 he was diagnosed with that ganglion in the neck to which the ointment they had prescribed did nothing.Then they called him low intensity lymphoma, caught very in time."Today we talk about more than one hundred different subtypes," reminds him of his hematologist, Antonio Salar.Marina García, 74 years old - "I will fulfill 75 on January 21" -, load with a follicular lymphoma for 20 years.Something almost normal.
"I know that mine does not cure, but it is being treated," he describes with his extensive knowledge of the disease.And ensure that it does not weigh.First they treated her with chemotherapy and had her corresponding sequelae.“When he played the chemo, the Rambla was going up, in Vilanova and La Geltrú, Mareadita.But except for hair loss, the rest endured well ”.
After a few years the nodes reappeared, and gave him new treatments with less side effects and opened the range of possibilities of his life.“Since 2007 I participate in essays at the Hospital del Mar.Every three or four years I have to change, because it reactivates, and now they put a different combination ”.Monoclonal antibodies changed the panorama first, with less side effects and thus better quality of life.
Now Marina also uses an enzyme inhibitors that participates in the proliferation of lymphocytes.The trials happen.They are increasingly fine."Directed therapy", concrete the head of the Hematology Section of the Hospital del Mar.
Among his comings and coming to the doctor, with his controls every two or three months, Marina practices her particular normality.“From 7.30 to 8.30, pool.Every day.I also try to walk every day.Then we go for a coffee the friends.Then home and prepare food for grandchildren.Two or three always come to me.If not, I don't see them.After eating, they leave me alone ".
Live alone, he was widowed in 2013, and receives the support of a person every 15 days."Everything is high.I really like cleaning and nobody does it to me like me, but I'm very happy with this help.What I fear is that the brio is over.But I'm not going to blame my illness.With chemio and everything I never stopped going for coffee to Munich every Saturday, which has already closed ”.
In his long living with the lymphoma he recognizes that he was scared to have cancer years ago."Before I thought it was better to die than to face.Now I don't hide ".