Diagnosis and treatment
Treatments you might experience for ALK+ NSCLC
Starting a lung cancer treatment can stir up a lot of emotions. While it can be a relief to start treating the cancer, you may feel apprehensive about what lies ahead.
This section of Younity is here to give you some background information on different types of treatment you might have, how they work, what you can expect while receiving each one, some top tips and information about potential side effects you may get too.
Your treatment is likely to change over time, and many people try multiple different treatments. Sometimes different treatments are combined; for example, you might have surgery, and also receive a chemotherapy around your surgery too (this is sometimes called adjunctive therapy).
It’s also important to be aware that there may be times when your healthcare team recommend that you stop receiving a treatment. There are two key reasons for this:
- You may experience a severe side effect. If this happens, your healthcare team may have to stop your treatment, as continuing to take it may do more harm than good
- A treatment may stop working for you. In other words, it may stop having an effect on your cancer, leading it to grow or progress again
Unfortunately, this just happens in some people, and it does not mean you’ve done anything wrong. In these instances, your healthcare team will decide whether to stop giving you a treatment based on your scans and other measurements of how your cancer is responding to treatment.
Having to stop taking a treatment doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t further treatment options available to you. You and your healthcare team will work together to review the options available to you, and decide what the best approach to managing your NSCLC will be.
Explore the links below to learn more
