The costs of cancer

What are the costs of cancer? Or how do you enumerate them all? There are medical costs which can bankrupt you.There are physical ones which leave you scarred for life. There are emotional ones that test your sanity. There are social ones which cost you relationships. There are medical ones which can kill you.

Much has been said about health care reform and how it will could help people facing a cancer or other icky diagnosis, but there is more to it than that. Health care reform will help with the financial impact and reduce some of the stress but that doesn't relieve the costs of cancer.

What about the other costs? How do do we relieve the rest of them? These are other costs that need to be addressed as well. We have come along way in relieving some of them. Cancer is not the hushed whisper any more so there is less of the social strain but it has not stopped our 'friends' from ditching us when the hear the word. Surgery has progressed so that scars are less disfiguring but they are still there. The emotional roller coaster is addressed by your medical team but in the middle of the night the little voice still says 'what if?'

We still have a long way to go.