Obviously, the more different types of treatment you have, the more your treatment is likely to ‘cost’. The situation with combination treatments is so complex that you could be very tempted just to tell your doctor to go ahead with whatever is most likely to cure you. The problem is that doctors have a tendency to overtreat, as we have seen. They are likely to want to add to your treatment anything that could be active against your cancer. They will probably make little or no attempt to weigh the likely additional cost against the likely additional benefit. In any case, you can do that much better than they can. It is therefore very important that you ask exactly what difference each part of your treatment is likely to make. What could happen if you only had one type of treatment? Does the addition of radiation improve the cure rate or only the local recurrence rate? How difficult is it to treat a recurrence? Would you still have a chance of cure if the disease recurred or is the ‘first bite at the cherry’ really your only chance? You will have to try to weigh up the possible costs against the possible benefits to come up with the decision that is best for you.
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Cancer
