Question:
What are the different stages of cancer? Someone close that I know was just diaganosed with Lymphoma and is in stage 3 whatever that means. Can someone either explain to me what each stage consists of (I think there are 5
stages?
Answer:
It's completely different depending on the type of cancer. FOr
instance, I have Hodgkin's. For Hodgkin's, staging is something like
this:
1. It's only in one teeny little place.
2. It's in a couple of teeny little places.
3. It's in a couple of places but it's also started going somewhere
else (ie. liver, spleen).
4. It's in a bunch of places.
They then add an A or B depending on whether or not you've had
symptoms -- I'm a 2B. Staging is not used to determine really "how
far along" things are but rather what kind of treatment will be used.
Staging DOES affect prognosis (obviously "it's only in one teeny
little place" is better then #4) but often not as much as you'd think.
Find out what kind of lymphoma your friend has and talk to him/her
about it. For me talking to others about it made it a lot easier for
me to deal with everything -- it made cancer "part of me that I can
deal with" rather than "something that's happening to me".
