Information Related to "Coming: An End to Suffering"
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Why is the world awash in suffering? How did the world come to be in such sad shape? Most important, what will bring the end to human misery?
by Larry Walker
An eerie silence hangs over the room. Chairs separated by curtains line the walls. Every seat is occupied. Men and women, old and middle-aged, sit quietly. Each patient is con- nected to a plastic tube that drips powerful chemicals into veins in his arm. Most of the people are bald. One has had a leg amputated just below the knee. An elderly man struggles to his feet, his spindly legs trembling. Another quickly takes his place.
The process is called chemotherapy. It is multiple biochemical drug therapy that doctors routinely prescribe to destroy tumor cells after cancer surgery.
Chemotherapy destroys fast-growing cells throughout the body, including cancer cells, which keep reappearing as the disease spreads. Doctors monitor each patient’s response and the growth of cancer cells to determine the details of appropriate treatment. Chemo, as it is called, is a fact of life for many cancer patients battling the disease.
Carol lives in a small town in Oregon. Her daughter drives her 150 miles for weekly treat ments. The trip takes four hours one way. From 9 in the morning until 1 in the afternoon, Carol is hooked up to a device that trickles the chemi cals into her system to fight her pancreatic can cer. Carol’s treatment cycle calls for two weeks of treatment, then a three-week reprieve.
As with many forms of medical treatment, side effects are a problem. They include weakness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, pain along the vein of infusion, anorexia, diarrhea, constipation, flulike symptoms, fever, headache, inflammation of the mouth’s mucous tissue and multiple lacerations and fissures in the mouth. Anemia and dermatitis are common delayed reactions.
Chemotherapy lowers the white-cell count and calcium levels and the platelets in the blood that normally enable clotting. Other side effects are destruction of functional liver tissue and bone marrow suppression as well as harmful pul monary, renal and central-nervous-system effects.
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