Defining the illness trajectory of metastatic breast cancer

This is a 2012 medical journal article from the UK, but should be accessible to patients and our personal and professional care providers who want to consider the different phases of living and dying with metastatic breast cancer.

It may also help those of us in support groups to better support one another as we traverse different phases of our shared diagnosis.

There are four figures or graphs of the illness trajectory between diagnosis and death that are worth reviewing.

This article and the figures help me to visualize what I've read and heard and witnessed from many living and dying with MBC and other cancers.

From the discussion section:

"This study suggests that for many women with metastatic breast cancer, cycles of decline and reprieve are the norm over an extending lifespan. Both the number of decline-reprieve cycles, and the time interval between these, can become extended because of the availability of a large number of new treatment options. The consequence of this is that women's lives are dominated by treatment and they endure chronic pain and symptoms that they largely manage for themselves. Women find themselves in a complex relationship with their oncologist where cycles of treatment are offered, accepted and endured as the only option for prolonging life at whatever cost, with little apparent planning for moments of decline resulting in admissions to hospital and the final months of life are characterised by disintegrated dying."

"Women are not in 'denial' over the seriousness of their illness, but find themselves with their oncologists, caught in a constant bid for further illness reprieve. Oncologists are hampered by the difficulty in recognising when the final decline has commenced or may occur, or that women may die from the consequences of treatment itself."

Free full text article at:

http://spcare.bmj.com/content/early/2013/07/23/bmj...

Warmest healing regards, Stephanie