Living With Lung Cancer
How does lung cancer affect a person's quality of life?
Lung cancer can affect the patient's breathing as the main component of quality of life. Shortness of breath or even coughing up blood restricts the blood and the speed. These are some of the ways it can affect your life. The other thing that lung cancer can cause is pain. These are significant things that can impact on your quality of life. However, there are treatments that would help impaliate these things. We could do chemotherapy, radiation, or even surgery in some of these instances.
How do people survive with only one lung?
Many patients can live with just one lung, and this will depend on your overall health and the evaluation of your lung function. This is based on the pulmonary function studies, and sometimes we also obtain a study called the quantitative lung profusion study, and we're able to determine how well you'll do with one lung and what your chances are of having complications and other risks if you were to have one lung remaining.
What is 'pulmonary rehabilitation'?
Pulmonary rehabilitation is incorporated into your care to improve your exercise capacity and endurance. Naturally, with lung cancer, and if you undergo surgery, radiation or chemotherapy, all of these will impact your underlying lung function. To enhance your overall exercise capacity,endurance, and strengthening, pulmonary rehabilitation can be a significant factor in improving your quality of life and overall breathing.
How can pulmonary rehabilitation help lung cancer survivors?
Pulmonary rehabilitation can help lung cancer survivors by helping to cope with breathlessness, with some practical exercises to improve your capacity to breathe and exercise endurance. And these things may help cope with the stress of shortness of breath.
What can I do to relieve the pain I feel from lung cancer?
There are palliative treatments available. One is that we can certainly give pain medications. Secondly, depending on where the cancer is and what the cause of the pain is, there are palliative radiation focal treatments that may improve your pain.