Coping with Terminal illnesses : Prevention over Cures

When you feel sick for too long, you pay your doctor a visit. The doctor assesses you and lets you know how to feel better. In a sense, you go to your doctor with a problem in hand, and they solve it for you. But what if your doctor is unable to provide a solution? Worse, they tell you there is no answer to your problem?

Modern medicine has come a long way since its first practice, dating back to 2600 BC. From performing surgeries with no anesthesia and the patient wide awake beneath the doctor’s scalpel to being able to detect and make early diagnoses of severe and fatal diseases before it even begins its work, it’s safe to say the practice of medicine has greatly improved for the better. Nevertheless, it can’t be said that we have learned all that there is to know about the human body and everything that can go wrong with it.

Terminal illnesses, also casually known as incurable diseases, are those conditions that are likely to lead the patient ultimately to death, as, like the name suggests, they have no cure, and the major treatment goal is to increase the quality of the patient’s life rather than to heal the patient of the disease completely.

The reason for the absence of a cure can vary for every condition. Viral diseases are majorly incurable because viruses are neither living nor dead and mutate quite literally at lightning speed. Neoplastic diseases are incurable because malignant neoplasms grow without regard to surrounding organs and disturb the normal functioning of said organs. Autoimmune diseases are incurable because, with your cells attacking cells of their own origin, it isn’t the easiest task to kill the problem-causing cells without affecting the normal ones. All these reasons conclusively connect to the fact that there is more to the human body and its operation than we are conscious of.

Some diseases that are incurable are :

• Asthma
• Alopecia
• Cancer
• Cystic fibrosis
• Diabetes
• Dengue
• Ebola
• Epilepsy
• Gastroparesis
• Graves disease
• Hepatitis B
• HIV/AIDS
• Multiple sclerosis
• Narcolepsy
• Osteoporosis
• Parkinson’s disease
• Rabies
• Scoliosis
• All Viral and Prion diseases

When a patient is diagnosed with an incurable disease, although there is no cure for the disease, improving the quality of their life and reducing symptoms of pain become the primary focus of their treatment plan. Nonetheless, even with these treatment options, the knowledge that one has a terminal illness is more so often met with the patient feeling anxious and stressed by the fact that their lifespan is being timed. Constantly suffering and being in pain without any sight of clear hope can negatively affect one’s mental state as well as hinder their will to fight on in life.

However, it is not to be understood that the existence of such incurable diseases is due to a lack of effort by medical workers. Humanity has done quite a lot of research and discovered a large number of new treatment plans for a variety of diseases and conditions. Even so, we are all simply inhabitant species of a much larger universe, filled with multiple other organisms of differing sizes, body organization, and living habits. The power that nature holds is beyond us, and it is not within our capability to know everything about everything, at least not yet.

A condition’s lack of a cure may make it sound terrifying, yet with the correct care, the patient can still lead a normal life. Medicine is a complex field. The human body is a complex mechanism, and with everyone having unique bodies and lifestyles, healthcare workers need to work case-by-case when it comes to treating patients. Hence, finding a solution for each and every patient’s problem is not a piece of cake.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to how the patient takes on this new obstacle in their life. To quote a question raised in Philosopher J. Krishnamurti’s question and answer meeting held in Saanen, Switzerland, “How can one face an incurable disease with all the physical pain and agony that’s involved?”.

The trick is to allow yourself to feel what you are feeling. Suffering from an incurable disease is really challenging. It’s mentally exhausting and draining. It’s both painful and terrifying. Bottling up feelings of misery, worry, and uncertainty can often amplify a patient’s sense of chaos and terror. So it’s critical that the person in pain spends time doing the things they enjoy, whether it’s reconnecting with an old activity or spending time with someone they’ve been meaning to see.

For a long time, the idea of various diseases with no potential cure has bothered me. Despite advances in science and healthcare, how do we still find ourselves in situations where we don’t have an answer? Well, I’ve learned that, while these conditions are incurable, they are avoidable, and contributing to prevention can go a long way. I’ve come to realize that by maintaining a healthy lifestyle, nutrition, mental state, and well-being in general, we may not only keep all kinds of medical disorders at bay, but also have great immunity and physique for when we do get sick. After all, as the saying goes, “Prevention is better than cure.”