Living with Melanoma

Today's guest post comes to us from Valerie Johnston who is a health and fitness writer located in East Texas. With ambitions of one day running a marathon, writing for Healthline.com ensures she keeps up-to-date on all the latest health and fitness news.

Melanoma is a very serious skin cancer that can sometimes be lethal. If not caught early enough, melanoma can become very difficult to treat and will most likely lead to death. However, for those lucky few that are able to find it early enough, life with this debilitating cancer can still be very rough.

Melanoma, like any other cancer, requires intense treatment to cure and force into remission. Some people may have to undergo months or even years of treatments and surgeries to remedy their cancer; and, even then, a majority of them will not make it out on the other side.

Treatment Options

For people living with this cancer, there are many different routes that they can take as ways to possibly cure their melanoma. Surgery is probably the most common and easiest way to treat malignant melanoma. The affected areas are removed from the patient’s body and then follow up treatments are prescribed. Though surgery is usually successful for removing the cancer patches, many times there will be additional cancerous cells that were not found and that will eventually end up killing these individuals. This is not always the case, but it is sadly more common than most people realize.

Radiation therapy is one option that some patients have for getting rid of their melanoma, though it is not guaranteed to work all of the time. Radiation is typically implemented only after a surgery is performed to remove the infected areas of skin. The purpose is to keep any new cancer cells from forming and to kill any that may have been left over. Unfortunately, this type of treatment does not usually prolong life expectancy for these patients.

Chemotherapy has been around for many years as a way to help kill cancer cells and sometimes even force the cancer into remission for some people. Chemo is usually a pretty effective means for fighting cancer, but sadly in the case of melanoma, it is not nearly as successful. There are a few other options that people can consider, but the overall outlook for melanoma victims is not very bright.

Keeping It Positive

Somehow, these cancer patients must find a way to keep their minds positive even when they know that they will most likely not live through this disease. Coping with the reality of a pretty certain death is not an easy thing to do, but there are ways to make life a little bit easier for these people.

Support and love are two of the most important things someone can give a cancer patient. Without any kind of positive influence in their lives, it is easy for cancer patients to become severely depressed. Depression on top of this illness is definitely not a good combination and can leave individuals feeling entirely hopeless.

Another thing that melanoma patients can do to help keep a positive spin on life is to live every day to the fullest possible potential. Maybe they are too weak to go for a hike, so taking a helicopter ride could be the experience of a lifetime. Even going to Disney Land or somewhere they have always dreamed of can provide so much happiness for people coping with this cancer.

Whether their cancer is stage one or stage four, melanoma sufferers have a rough road ahead of them, especially having to face the fact that they may not live much longer. Sometimes there is no solid answer when dealing with such serious matters as a terminal cancer like melanoma, but there is always something that can be done to make living with it a little bit more comfortable and happy.

NOTE: I will be returning soon with my personal blog notes. Stay tuned, and enjoy the guest blogs.