Word: cancerous
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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There is no grimmer duty in a hospital than working in a cancer ward full of dying patients. As custodians of terminal cases, nurses bear particularly heavy emotional burdens. The girls show a tough and cold exterior-an attitude quickly acquired in hospital service. But often it cloaks deep feelings of anger and frustration at their inability to slow the inevitable or at least relieve their patients' pain. The patients, in turn, become even more despondent. Confronted by apparently diffident nurses, they begin to complain that they are lied to about their condition, treated with contempt and given inadequate...
...without letup, says Neurosurgeon Benjamin L. Crue of the City of Hope, the chances are 10 to 1 that it is neurotic or at least psychogenic. "Organic pain doesn't work that way," says Crue. "It comes and goes, with a few exceptions such as some cases of cancer. Nearly all the rest of the pain that patients call 'constant' or 'unremitting' is psychological." This is not to say that such pain is not "real." Most medical authorities now agree with Sternbach, who says: "Excluding the malingerer, who by definition is a deliberate faker...
Stay the Knife. Technically, the total suppression of pain comes only with anesthesia, which cannot be prolonged. The lighter state of analgesia, or relief of pain without loss of consciousness, is far more difficult to achieve. For cancer patients with intractable pain of indisputably physical origin, neurosurgeons have devised a number of radical operations. One of the commonest, for pain anywhere below the neck, is cordotomy-literally, cutting the spinal cord-a remedy that is less drastic than it sounds. In the standard operation, the cord is exposed and a small cut is made in the nerve bundles controlling...
...control of pain have come through the side door, from psychiatry. Three in number, they involve the use of psychotropic drugs, the application of standard psychotherapeutic techniques, and hypnosis. First of the drugs to find favor was chlorpromazine (Thorazine), used to reduce the severe anxiety of patients with advanced cancer. Serendipitously, it was found that when their anxiety was lessened, so was their perception of pain -though not necessarily the underlying sensation. Many a patient said: "Doctor, I still feel the pain, but it doesn't bother me so much...
...trifled with. To his door can be attributed the cause of more sorrow, misery, and disease than any other single factor in American life. The war only too clearly showed there is no place for him in a serious nation. By cutting out the heart of the cancer, only can the cancer be cured. The necessary operation has been performed...