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“Those days prior to the diagnosis when I’d felt the symptoms but hadn’t got any answers, they were some of the worst days of my life,” she tells SBS News.
My mind was jumping to the worst possible case scenario and the worst conclusions, even though they were all hypothetical at that stage.
Above all, she was concerned she wouldn’t be able to care for her son, who was two years old at the time.
“I had a young child, so I was afraid of putting him at risk and all of that was really completely non-factual, but that’s what the mind settled on when you’re in a place of uncertainty and fear.”
Why radiotherapy is underutilised
Despite radiotherapy being a safe and reliable treatment for many types of cancer, one in five eligible Australian cancer patients never receive it, according to research cited by Australian oncologists.
Radiation therapy machines have advanced significantly over the past few decades, according to oncologists. Source: Supplied / St George Cancer Care Centre
Professor Sandra Turner, a senior radiation oncologist at the Sydney West Radiation Oncology Network at Westmead Hospital, explains that general knowledge about the treatment in Australia is outdated.
“There used to be some places in the body that we couldn’t easily use radiotherapy because of the sensitive structures or organs next to that area,” she says.
With our new technologies, [we are] able to get around those problems.
“And mainly this has come about through being able to accurately visualise the organ or part of the body that’s being treated at the time it’s being treated.”
“Quite often you do need to get some combination of both or even all three of those modalities in a very particular kind of sequence and even overlapping sometimes to get the best chance of controlling the disease.”
Quality of life
Despite the side effects — with the most common being skin irritation and fatigue — Duhan tells SBS News his experience of radiotherapy treatment was relatively stress-free.
When considering his cancer treatment options, Kuldeep Duhan says he wanted to prioritise his ability to keep working. Source: Supplied
“It was an easy decision for me to do it because if I went for the surgery, I would’ve had to take a month off work,” Duhan says.
“So I had a bit of a mild cough for a period of time and some sensation of I guess discomfort while swallowing. But that was very short-lived. And because I was expecting it, I knew that it was part of the immediate side effects from the treatment.”
Mapleson and Duhan have since successfully finished their radiation therapies, but Turner says other patients could still be sceptical or fearful of the treatment.
Dispelling misconceptions
“Often people think that you are going to be radioactive when you have treatment and that could be damaging to people’s families or children or pregnant people,” she says.
Although there are some much less common forms of radiation therapy that use radioactivity, the vast majority of people having radiotherapy are never radioactive.
“So a lot of those generalised side effects like nausea and vomiting and other things that you can get from chemotherapy are much less common with radiotherapy, depending on that part of the body that we are treating.”
‘Mind-blowing’ applications
“So in radiation oncology, we’re now working hard to get good high quality data about exactly how much we can maybe help people with these other conditions as well.”
“It’s important that decision makers, policy makers, and governments understand the importance of radiation therapy and to appropriately invest in radiotherapy services that are needed to make sure that all patients get good access to radiotherapy,” she says.
Raising awareness
Organisers of the event say research shows approximately 200 million people live in countries with no radiotherapy facilities.
