How Follow up care helps to live a fulfilling life after cancer

Surviving cancer is one of the best living examples of the age old saying: ‘good things can come even out of bad situations’. For cancer patients and survivors, every single day is a chance to live better and get better as they slowly progress towards living a normal life just like their near and dear ones.?

Thankfully, recent medico-scientific innovations and the arrival of many revolutionary medical treatments have made cancer curable in several cases, and the list is growing every year. Early detection and proper care and treatment today often leads to a complete cure. However, once cured, patients have to be a little cautious and careful as there are chances of cancer recurrence. To avoid such scenarios and accompanying complications, we always advise cancer patients to follow a properly prescribed follow up care. The ‘follow up care’ is meant for patients whose treatment has resulted in complete remission and it includes regular medical checkups and screenings for any signs for recurrence. It also includes making some healthy lifestyle changes.?

The regular checkups include blood tests, imaging procedures (pictures of areas inside the body likely to be affected by cancer), endoscopy (use of a thin lighted tube to examine the inside of the body), and other lab tests, that comprehensively look for any changes in overall health. These tests also check for any hidden side-effects of the cancer treatments, and sometimes also include mental health checkups, which quite understandably gets affected due to long term treatment procedures.?

Almost all cancer hospitals or clinics offer extensive follow up care plans, which are also sometimes known as ‘survivorship care plans’. Each patient gets a different and customized ‘follow up care’ schedule based on the type of cancer, the treatment received and overall health including any treatment related side-effects. The follow up treatments or checkups happen every three to four months during the first two to three years after treatment and once or twice a year after that.???????

On their part, patients and survivors should be vigilant about any subtle changes in their overall health. A very important point is that recurrences are found out by patients only during the scheduled follow up checkups and therefore it is necessary to keep a very cautious track on health changes and symptoms.? Particularly, they should be watchful for early signs that have the chances of turning to cancer symptoms: including any kind of recurrent pains, fatigue, bladder difficulty, sexual dysfunctions, concentration problems, insomnia and unexpected weight gain or loss. They should also inform their doctors about other medicines or supplements they are taking post survival. Finally, giving due cognizance to their mental health, they should also inform their doctor about any symptoms of anxiety or depression, or if they have any medical history of anxiety or depression, or finally, if anyone else in their family has been recently diagnosed with anxiety or depression.?

Apart from follow-up care, being part of support groups and other services like genetic counseling, nutrition counseling, physical therapy and pain management among others are all helpful in bringing the patient back to living a normal and fulfilling life. More is in store – ongoing studies by reputed cancer institutes and organizations are aiming to further improve the follow up care facilities for survivors.

Also, building strong links of cooperation and mutual trust between the survivor and the medical team always leads to a faster and healthy recovery. Sessions on mental health management or on healthy lifestyle are equally important in helping a survivor live a normal life.?

To conclude, a well-planned and customized follow up care plan provides powerful moral support in helping survivors return to live their lives as closely as possible to how they lived before they were diagnosed with cancer. Though a doctor can never predict the chances of recurrence of cancer, a good follow up care plan will ensure ready access to the entire case history and will also suggest measures to reduce the chances of recurrence.?