Cancer is very easy to relapse, and most of the disease worsens due to recurrence, becoming the direct cause of death from this disease. Modern medicine believes that the infiltration of cancer cells into surrounding tissues and organs or distant metastasis through the blood lymphatic system is the main way for cancer to relapse . Traditional Chinese medicine believes that the main pathogenesis of cancer recurrence is that the healthy qi has not recovered, the evil qi is excessive, and the righteousness does not suppress the evil.
Generally, the peak period of recurrence and metastasis is about two years after surgery for malignant tumors. After two years, the probability of recurrence gradually decreases. After five years, the probability of recurrence and metastasis is very small. Therefore, if there is no recurrence or metastasis in 5 years, it is called clinical cure . Some cancer patients find recurrence and metastasis soon after surgery. This may be due to two situations. One is that the surgery was unsuccessful, such as incomplete tumor resection, positive margins, or incomplete lymph node dissection, resulting in local residual cancer cells, and the surgery After the disease is weakened, the remaining cancer cells proliferate rapidly in a short period of time and migrate to other places through blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. There is another possibility that metastasis has occurred before surgery, but the metastasis is small and has not been detected by CT or magnetic resonance examination. PET-CT has more advantages in detecting micro-metastasis, but after all, it is expensive and only a few people can do it. PET-CT will be used for preoperative evaluation. If there are micro-metastasis in other organs before the operation, and after the huge trauma of the operation, the metastasis may gradually increase to the point that it can be detected by ordinary CT within three months after the operation.
How does traditional Chinese medicine view recurrence of cancer patients? First of all, some cancer patients mostly relapse without obvious triggering factors. Such patients usually do not receive timely treatment and do not pay attention to the follow-up treatment during the recovery period. Although they have undergone surgery or radiotherapy and chemotherapy , the problem has not been completely solved. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that the pathogenesis of this type of cancer patients is mostly due to lingering evils that have not been purified and the righteousness has been deficient, causing the remaining evils to rekindle. The main manifestations are deficiency syndrome, and its root is "remaining evil". The treatment is mainly to strengthen the body, which means "the evil will go away when there is good".
The second reason for recurrence is emotional. If negative emotions persist for a long time, they may affect the patient's diet and sleep, thereby affecting the body's state and immunity, which will definitely have a negative impact on the treatment of tumors and the patient's recovery. Tumors are not scary. What is scary is the despair, fear and other negative psychology caused by tumors. Generally speaking, those whose tumors have been clinically cured, or those who live with tumors and live a long life, tend to have cheerful, positive, upward, and optimistic personalities. However, those who are usually not sick, but suddenly have tumors discovered during physical examinations and die quickly, may have such symptoms. Resentment, fear and other negative psychology are one of the main culprits that lead to the progression of tumors. It is worth mentioning that as long as you maintain a positive attitude, you will be more likely to defeat cancer, because a positive attitude will keep people's body functions in a good state. Once your body is in good condition, you will be more likely to overcome various diseases. If you are unhappy every day and think that there is no possibility of cure as long as you suffer from cancer, then the possibility of getting a cure is very small.
The third one is too tired. After treatment, cancer patients cannot get the rest they deserve, work too hard too early, or engage in physical labor too early, which leads to depletion of qi, blood, yin and yang, and uncontrolled evil, leading to recurrence. There is a sentence in "Treatise on the Causes and Symptoms of Various Diseases": "If the husband is ill and has a new spasm, his blood and Qi are still weak and his body fluids have not recovered, so he has to work hard and become more sick. If talking and thinking takes a lot of effort, combing your hair and bathing takes a lot of effort, you will not be able to bear it. If you work hard, you will generate heat, and the heat will return to the meridians, and you will become sick again. "Cancer patients must advocate resting and not exercising excessively. Exercise only until you sweat slightly."
In clinical practice, some patients with recurrent and metastatic cancer are treated very passively. They think that it makes no difference whether the cancer is cured or not, and that there is no need to treat the cancer if it recurs. This is a big misunderstanding. It should be noted that incurability is not only a matter of survival, but many painful symptoms are unbearable for patients. The first is cancer pain.If left untreated, cancer cells will continue to multiply, and the pain in the body will also intensify. When cancer cells invade the body, what follows is bone-eroding pain all over the body. Many patients eventually cannot bear the pain and cannot think about it. , causing huge harm to patients and their families.
The second is organ failure. Cancer cells reproduce very fast, even hundreds of times as fast as normal cells. After the diseased organ is completely occupied, it will move to other territories, leading to organ failure. At the same time, patients can become very susceptible to illness. Cancer will cause certain damage to the body's immune system. At this time, if it is invaded by external germs, it may be difficult to resist, resulting in fever, cold and other uncomfortable symptoms, and may also trigger a series of infections. For example, if some pathogens If it enters the lungs, it may cause pneumonia.
So what should you do after recurrence? Most people believe that in the late stages of cancer, cancer cells have metastasized, and effective treatment is usually impossible. Patients often can only wait for death. However, this statement is not true. Although cancer cells metastasize, they will not be cured in a short period of time. The patient died within 10 seconds, so there is still the possibility of treatment. However, after the cancer cells metastasize, because other organs and tissues are affected by the cancer cells, their functions are greatly weakened, and their own regulatory abilities gradually disappear, so the difficulty of treatment will gradually increase. Although the patient cannot be guaranteed to be cured, it can be maintained. The patient's body functions help the patient survive with the tumor.
Once recurrence occurs, cancer patients are in poor physical condition and have a relatively large tumor burden in the body, so they are not suitable for aggressive therapies, which will easily increase the burden on the body and fail to achieve the goal of prolonging survival. Especially in some elderly patients, the functions of various organs are relatively weak and they are often complicated by other chronic diseases. If excessively aggressive treatment is performed, their survival time will often be shortened due to severe side effects. Therefore, at this time, we should pay more attention to the patient's overall treatment and quality of life. Only by improving the patient's physical fitness can we better fight cancer and prolong life.
The key to treating cancer is to improve the internal environment of the body. It truly emphasizes the effective control of cancer lesions on the basis of maintaining quality of life, so as to achieve long-term survival. When cancer recurs, traditional Chinese medicine can be taken to strengthen the body and eliminate evil, enhance the body's immunity, and resist the recurrence of tumors, so that some patients with residual tumor lesions can still survive with tumors for a long time and have a good quality of life.
