Palliative Care

JOY SCALE: 10/10

Hi Everyone, I hope today finds you well and happy. Today I am going to discuss palliative care. Palliative care is a treatment for relieving symptoms and is not expected to cure the disease. Its main purpose is to improve quality of life. For example I have an intrathecal pain pump in my abdomen that dispenses a morphine solution 24/7 into my spinal fluid. The morphine relieves some of, but not all of, my pain. It helps improve the quality of my life. I also have morphine tablets that I can take for break through pain which is also considered palliative. The hormone treatment I receive is also palliative. My hormone treatment consists of an implant every 3 months and it reduces my testosterone production. Little or no testosterone means that my cancer has nothing to feed on and that helps my bone tumors to shrink until my cancer finds a way around the hormone treatment. If you believe in statistics 2 years is the time when the hormone treatment no longer works and the cancer starts up again. I don't believe in statistics and I have heard about men that have remained on the hormones for 10 and 15 years. I plan on living longer than that. Besides, it is possible that new and improved treatments will be invented and I will try those. For now there are no more treatments for me other than the hormone treatment I feel that a positive attitude goes a long way towards extending my life on hormones.

Don't forget to breathe deep and laugh long.

Peace and Love to All