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Journalism of Courage
Actor Tannishtha Chatterjee has revealed how she is fighting stage 4 oligo metastatic cancer and how the love and strength from her female friends was pushing her through.
Opening up about her journey, she recalled how, after losing her father to cancer, receiving her own diagnosis was painful. “So the last 8 months have been incredibly difficult to put it mildly. As if losing my father to Cancer was not enough. 8 months back, I got diagnosed with stage 4 oligo metastatic Cancer. But this post is not about Pain. It’s about love and strength,” she wrote.
This is not a type of cancer as such but rather the stage of cancer. “The cancer can be of any origin, be it lungs, breast, colon or kidneys. It is a stage when less than five cancerous lesions are found outside the primary organ,” says Dr Sewanti Limaye, Director of Medical & Precision Oncology, Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai. In other words, it’s an intermediate stage between localised cancer and widespread metastatic spread, when the cancer has spread to all parts of the body. “So patients are still candidates for curative treatment strategies that focus on eradicating metastatic lesions,” says Dr Limaye.
“The difference between systemic metastasis and oligometastatic disease is that in the former, the disease spreads to all sites in the body while in oligometastatic disease, the disease spreads to less than five sites in the body. So this is relatively better controlled than systemic metastatic disease,” says Dr (Brig) Anil Kumar Dhar, Clinical Director & Head, Medical Oncology, Marengo Asia Hospitals, Gurugram.
The treatment of this disease is multi-pronged. “This includes systemic therapy, radiotherapy, surgery, immunotherapy and targeted therapy. This stage comes before systemic metastatic cancer. So patients usually respond to conservative treatment with immunotherapy, targeted therapy, radiotherapy and surgery,” says Dr Dhar.
Not all patients need surgery. “But for those who need it, a surgery works well,” says Dr Limaye.
Some patients require localized radiotherapy (SBRT) which precisely delivers high doses of radiation to a localized tumor in the body. This way the entire course of treatment can be crunched to a few sessions (typically 1 to 5) over a short period (1-2 weeks), making it a cost-effective and convenient alternative to longer radiation courses. “This can effectively eliminate the tumor. Some patients will benefit from surgery. Targeted therapy, which attacks specific molecules, like proteins or genes, in or on cancer cells, can halt cancer growth while sparing healthy cells. Immunotherapy, which helps a person’s own immune system fight cancer cells by boosting its natural ability to detect and destroy them, works too,” says Dr Dhar.
As for chemotherapy, which targets the full body, Dr Dhar says it is given to some patients depending upon the site of the primary tumor.
Once the threat is eliminated, a patient needs maintenance therapy. “Each person’s cancer is different regarding how it spreads and how quickly it spreads. That’s why it’s important to have an assessment as soon as possible to determine where your cancer is on the spectrum of disease. Then there are various options to ensure survival,” says Dr Dhar.
