Step 3:Understand Your Diagnosis

Once you are diagnosed with cancer, your doctor will begin throwing numbers and terms at you to describe the parameters of your disease: size, shape, survival rate, and a whole lot more. These will lead to a lot of questions on your part such as: What do the parameters of my diagnosis mean? What is important to know, and what are my options? Does it help to know my survival chances, or will it discourage me? This section helps you to define and decipher your diagnosis so you can use the information from your doctor to understand what all the numbers and unfamiliar terms mean. Next, we get you started on building your personal Cancer Notebook. The Notebook is a place to organize all the information you are gathering on the specifics of your disease. Then, with all your information collected and easily accessible, you can use this to start building the best medical team possible for your type of cancer.

Build your Cancer Notebook

Once your doctor suspected you had cancer, you were given any number of diagnostic tests ranging across x-rays, MRI's, blood work, etc., to determine your disease and its parameters. These parameters include: type, size, shape, site, and stage. They are important for a number of reasons. It helps the doctor determine what type of cancer you have and your entire treatment trajectory from this point forward. Also, it helps you and your doctor determine the speed at which things have to move. For instance, if you have a particularly aggressive cancer that is at an advanced stage, your doctor will probably want to start treatment rapidly (although in most cases you still have a week or two to do research and make informed decisions).