Cancer�s toll: The hours and hours getting treatment
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON � The hours spent sitting in doctors� waiting rooms, in line for the CT scan, watching chemotherapy drip into veins: Battling cancer steals a lot of time � at least $2.3 billion worth for patients in the first year of treatment alone.
So says the first study to try to put a price tag to the time that people spend being treated for 11 of the most common cancers.
Even more sobering than the economic toll are the tallies, by government researchers, of the sheer hours lost to cancer care:
368 hours in that first year after diagnosis with ovarian cancer; 272 hours being treated for lung cancer, 193 hours for kidney cancer.
That doesn�t count the days spent home in bed recovering from surgery or weak from chemo, just time spent actively getting care � chemo or radiation therapy, blood tests or cancer scans, surgery or checkups, driving to medical appointments and waiting your turn.
It�s a study, to be published today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that sheds new light on the human costs of cancer.
�What we see here is a measure of the patient�s burden of commitment,� wrote Drs. Larry Kessler of the Food and Drug Administration and Scott Ramsey of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, in an accompanying editorial.
If this isn't just cause to quit smoking I give up because I have been there and done that.
Duffis
[B]My Milage:[/B]
[B]My Quit Date: [/B] 2/13/2005
[B]Smoke-Free Days:[/B] 689
[B]Cigarettes Not Smoked:[/B] 20,694
[B]Amount Saved:[/B] $1770.73
[B]Life Gained:[/B]
[B]Days:[/B] 144 [B]Hrs:[/B] 22 [B]Mins:[/B] 57 [B]Seconds:[/B] 54
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Quit Meter
$287,387.50
Amount Saved
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Quit Meter
Days: 6897
Hours: 10
Minutes: 9
Seconds: 56
Life Gained
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Quit Meter
45982
Smoke Free Days
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Quit Meter
1,149,550
Cigarettes Not Smoked
