Coping With Lung Cancer Treatment Options and Side Effects
- “Doubling Down With the Derricos” reality TV star Marian ‘GG’ Derrico, 75, has dealt with lung cancer since her initial diagnosis in 2014. In 2022, her cancer returned; notably, her tumor had grown to the size of a baseball. She’s now rethinking her treatment options.
- Derrico received chemotherapy for treatment, and although it managed to shrink her tumor, she admits the side effects of chemo are “rough” on her body. Common chemo side effects include fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and hair loss.
- Lung cancer is commonly already in stage 4 when it is first diagnosed because its symptoms are hard to detect in the early stages of the disease. A persistent cough, fatigue, and shortness of breath are common but not easily distinguishable from more benign conditions.
- Treating lung cancer depends on the cancer’s location and how advanced it is. Surgery may be ideal for early-stage lung cancer because it’s localized to the lung.
- More advanced lung cancer has spread beyond the lungs, and chemotherapy and immunotherapy (which uses the immune system to fight cancer cells) may be more optimal.
“This last bout of chemo roughed me up,” Marian Derrico said in an Instagram video.
Read MoreView this post on Instagram“GG, now she’s still just dealing with the residual effects of the chemo. So she still has good days and bad days,” Marian’s son, Deon, told Parade during an interview.
Marian is beginning to believe she’s at the end of the road for chemotherapy, thinking it is not as effective as it once was, and is turning her attention to less traditional treatment options.
“She feels that the modern-day medicine has taken her as far as it’s going to take her,” Marian’s son Deon said.
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Marian, the beloved grandmother on the popular reality TV show, was first diagnosed with lung cancer in 2014. Years later, in 2022, she learned the cancer had returned and the tumor had grown substantially in size before chemotherapy helped shrink it back down. It’s important to note that specific details on the type of lung cancer and the exact stage it is in are unknown publicly at this time. Despite her challenges, Marian expressed her desire to keep fighting and be around for many more years for her family.
“I love life, and I want to be here a lot longer,” Marian Derrico said.
Helping Patients Understand Lung Cancer Risks
Coping With Chemotherapy Lung Cancer Treatment
Lung cancer often doesn’t cause symptoms until it has already spread outside the lungs. Doctors may suspect lung cancer after seeing a shadow on a routine chest X-ray that requires further evaluation.
Once a lung cancer diagnosis is confirmed, it’s important to find out whether the cancer has spread. Depending on the part of the body being scanned, additional scans may include a CT scan, PET scan, or MRI.
The PET/CT scan combines two imaging tests in one. CT stands for computed tomography. It uses X-rays to take pictures of the body from many different angles.
PET is an acronym for positron emission tomography. It uses a radioactive form of sugar that cancer cells absorb more than healthy cells, helping to distinguish healthy cells from cancer. A PET scan can help determine the extent of the cancer’s spread and its stage before treatment.
WATCH: Understanding PET and CT Scans.
A of the chest, abdomen, pelvis, and brain to see if the cancer has started to spread outside of the lung.
Treatment varies depending on which type and stage of cancer you have. If the cancer is local — meaning just in the lungs — surgery may be an option. However, if cancer has spread to the lymph nodes, a combination of radiation (use of X-ray-like beams focused on cancer cells to kill them) with chemotherapy, followed by immunotherapy (treatment method where the immune system is re-engineered to target cancer cells and kill them), maybe the best option.
Once the cancer has spread outside of the lungs, chemotherapy and/or targeted drugs are used to control its growth as much as possible.
Surgery is more optimal for early-stage lung cancer, meaning the cancer has not spread beyond the lungs. For more advanced stages of lung cancer, adding chemotherapy and other treatment methods may be ideal.
Chemotherapy and Lung Cancer
Chemotherapy is often recommended in patients with high-risk features such as tumors > 4cm or in poorly differentiated tumors. There are other factors your clinical team will also consider when deciding whether chemotherapy is right for you.
Chemotherapy alone used to be the mainstay of treatment for stage 4 lung cancer. It is often used with other treatment options, such as immunotherapy, radiation therapy, or targeted medications. Chemotherapy is important in stage 4 cancer because often, more localized treatment options, like focused radiation or surgery, are no longer possible due to the extent of the disease and how much it has spread to other parts of the body (also called metastasis).
WATCH: How targeted therapies can be used for advanced lung cancer.
Systemic treatment of the body with chemotherapy is helpful to slow the progression of further growth of the primary cancer, prevent future metastasis, and relieve symptoms associated with existing tumors. However, chemotherapy works by killing all cell types, healthy or cancerous, that are multiplying quickly, so it does have significant side effects for the healthy tissue – the pain point Marian Derrico has struggled with.
Some patients may also be considered for other therapies, including the targeted agent osimertinib and the immunotherapy drug atezolizumab. These drugs are very different from chemotherapy and are often much better tolerated. However, to receive these drugs, the tumor must test positive for certain biomarkers that allow these drugs to be effective. Genetic testing helps distinguish specific biomarkers in cancerous tumors and determine effective treatments.
Understanding Lung Cancer and Why It’s Hard to Catch Early
Lung cancer forms when cancer cells develop in the tissues of the lung. It is the second most common form of cancer and the leading cause of cancer deaths in both men and women in the U.S., SurvivorNet experts say. It’s “completely asymptomatic,” says thoracic surgeon-in-chief at Temple University Health System Dr. Joseph Friedberg.
“It causes no issues until it has spread somewhere. So, if it spreads to the bones, it may cause pain. If it spreads to the brain, it may cause something not subtle, like a seizure,” Dr. Friedberg adds.
WATCH: Detecting lung cancer in the absence of symptoms.
Scans such as X-rays can help doctors determine if a shadow appears, which can prompt further testing for lung cancer.
Lung cancer often doesn’t cause symptoms until it has already spread outside the lungs, according to SurvivorNet’s experts.
There are two main types of lung cancer, which doctors group together based on how they act and how they’re treated:
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type and makes up about 85% of cases.
Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is less common, but it tends to grow faster than NSCLC and is treated very differently.Some people with lung cancer may experience symptoms such as:
- A cough that doesn’t go away, that gets worse, or that brings up bloody phlegm
- Shortness of breath
- Fatigue
- Chest pain
- Hoarse voice
- Appetite loss
- Weight loss
If you are experiencing these kinds of symptoms consistently, contact your doctor for further tests.
Standard Treatment and Non-traditional Treatment Approaches
Marian Derrico admits she’s willing to explore non-traditional treatment approaches for her lung cancer since she believes chemotherapy isn’t working as well as it once did.
Traditional treatment methods for cancer may include surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation regimens. Understandably, these treatments are not easy to deal with as they often bring grueling side effects from hair loss to diarrhea. Some patients opt for non-traditional treatments to avoid these side effects, while others bypass traditional therapy for other reasons. Examples of non-traditional treatments may include relying on herbal supplements, homeopathic drugs, or a changed diet and lifestyle.
A study published in the medical journal JAMA Oncology focused on complementary medicine, refusal of conventional cancer therapy, and patient survival. The researchers surmised that patients are more likely to die when they rely on non-traditional cancer treatments.
WATCH: Complementary Treatment
“We know that many, many patients out there are using complementary and alternative medicine, but they’re not talking with their providers about it,” says Dr. James Yu, a radiation oncologist at Yale Cancer Center who led the study.
Yu and his colleagues examined information collected from 1.9 billion people in the National Cancer Database. They found that people who chose complementary medicine for cancer treatment were more likely to be female, younger, affluent, well-educated, and privately insured.
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People who chose complementary medicine were also more likely to refuse some conventional treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and hormone therapy, Yu says. Unfortunately, these people had a two-fold greater risk of death compared with patients who did not use complementary medicine.
Yu stresses that using complementary therapies to improve patient’s quality of life should be okay as long as they do not interfere with conventional medicines and help them feel better.
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