New treatments for lymphoma patients are being released each year but what does that mean to patients put on Watch & Wait?
Nurse Practitioner Marg Meyer joined Lymphoma Canada to present a Watch & Wait webinar where she discussed the clinical evidence and applications for Watch & Wait, as well as some of the challenges faced by patients and coping tools.
Lymphoma survivor Alyssa Burkus also shared her own personal experience and some of the ways she learned to cope with being put on Watch& Wait.
Watch & Wait, also referred to as Watch & Worry, has been a protocol used by physicians treating indolent or slow growing lymphomas. People who are well, who do not have widespread symptoms, and whose lymph nodes are not obviously enlarging rapidly or threatening an organ may be advised that regular monitoring is the recommended course of action. This monitoring continues until the illness changes and treatment is considered necessary.
“Being told they don’t want to treat you right away feels more like being told they just don’t know what to do”, says Ralph McNabb, who was diagnosed in 2004 with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. “I felt like my specialist had just given up on me, but didn’t want to say so”
