Multi-Drug Approach

Folks, I think it's going to be some quick posts this week. Just too much going on. (In a good way.)

So today's quickie is about an article in the prestigious journal Nature that suggests what cancer treatments will probably look like in the future: a multi-drug approach (rather than a single, targeted drug) that will aim to manage cancer (not cure it). I'm not even linking to the Nature article itself, but rather to a press release from Harvard, where the Nature author works.

It's an interesting concept, and it's related to the way HIV has been handled: no single drug was found to work for more than a short time, so a "cocktail" of drugs is used now to manage the disease. The HIV virus was just too complex and smart to hit with one drug.

Cancer is even smarter, I would guess. It has certainly proven to be so far.

This -- if it turns out to be true -- is going to require a very different mindset, from both patients and doctors. We all want to hear the "Cured" word, but living in this state of "Management" will require some emotional strength.

Of course, those of us who have been watching and waiting already know how to deal with this mental feat of being able to exist in that state of limbo. My biggest bit of advice, for those of you who might one day find yourself in that situation: it takes a good six months to get used to it.

My second piece of advice: live your life. There's no sense in stopping yourself from doing the things you can do, physically, because of what might happen someday.