Early intervention of palliative care new shift in treatment for better survival results.
- Jill
- Jun 21, 2024
- 1 min read
This paper was comparing the results of incorporating early palliative care interventions vs. treatment as usual/standard cancer care on health-related quality of life, depression, symptom intensity, and survival among adults with a diagnosis of advanced cancer.
As a patient with stage 4 cancer I found being rejected by UCSD's palliative care department multiple times ridiculous as I don’t qualify. WTF?! How do I not qualify?
My understanding of palliative care is that they are to be there to help you as a patient manage all the symptoms and pain you are dealing with as a result of my stage 4 cancer diagnosis. I feel that if I had not been rejected so much and someone listened to me regarding my dysautonomia diagnosis would not have taken 5 years just to convince a Doctor that I needed to go to neurology.
This article lays out common sense that if patients get help managing our symptoms, aliments, issues, treatments, etc. they will suffer less and have better quality of life.
My hope is that this new protocol is adopted quickly and helps as many people as possible. Please be sure to take an advocate with you when your meeting with providers. Make sure you don’t take no for an answer. Ask providers why or why not. Make they explain their decisions as sometime they are just positioning that the medical system has for stupid reasons.
Be your best advocate!!!
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