Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Dealing with cancer of a child

Dear Mr Tan,

I remember reading your views on prohibitive treatment for elderly parents with potentially terminal cancers.

My question is, what if the cancer applies to a child?

There is a fund raising request circulating on facebook for a child with high risk neuroblastoma. The treatment cost is sgd 1.2M that includes treatment in the US.

Naturally, parents will do everything for a child, including bankrupting themselves under crippling debt, to give a child a chance.

What are your views on this?

Wikipedia has this to say about this type of cancer - Between 20% and 50% of high-risk cases do not respond adequately to induction high-dose chemotherapy and are progressive or refractory. Relapse after completion of frontline therapy is also common. Further treatment is available in phase I and phase II clinical trials that test new agents and combinations of agents against neuroblastoma, but the outcome remains very poor for relapsed high-risk disease.

Most long-term survivors alive today had low or intermediate risk disease and milder courses of treatment compared to high-risk disease. The majority of survivors have long-term effects from the treatment. Survivors of intermediate and high-risk treatment often experience hearing loss. Growth reduction, thyroid function disorders, learning difficulties, and greater risk of secondary cancers affect survivors of high-risk disease.[An estimated two of three survivors of childhood cancer will ultimately develop at least one chronic and sometimes life-threatening health problem within 20 to 30 years after the cancer diagnosis

REPLY

There are ways to deal with the cancer, other than to pay high medical bills. One way is to pray for a miracle. It sometimes happens. Another way is to go for herbal treatment. it might help. I do not agree that the family should "bankrupt themselves" to seek expensive treatment. They money should be kept for the benefit of the other children or to take care of the parents when they grow old.

I might take a different view if the doctor is able to guarantee success, i.e. if the treatment is not successful, the parents do not have to pay the bill.

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