Thyroid cancer occurs in the thyroid gland. The function of this gland is to produce a hormone using iodine extracted from the bloodstream. This form of cancer can cause a lot of pain but the advances in modern medicine have developed many ways to reduce the pain caused by thyroid cancer.
Understanding the causes of pain due to thyroid cancer treatment
The pain you feel due to thyroid cancer would vary depending on the kind of thyroid cancer treatment you have undertaken. Radioiodine treatment would produce different side effects compared to the same by chemotherapy. Moreover, you also need to know whether the pain is caused by a nerve pressing against a bone.
Ways to reduce pain caused by thyroid cancer
- Pain due to salivary discomfort caused by dried mouth after radioiodine treatment can be treated by sucking on a candy which is free from sugar.
- You should not confine yourself to the pain relieving techniques prescribed by your doctor. The natural pain relief methods should be tried alongside. These include slow, rhythmic breathing, meditation, imagery, massage acupuncture, skin stimulation, Yoga and other methods.
- Many medicinal options for relieving the pain caused by thyroid cancer have been recommended by the National Cancer Institute in USA. Some of the options are opiods, acetaminophen and local anaesthetics.
- Keep your body fit by low impact exercises such as walking, pilates, tai chi and yoga. This is one of the important recommendations for helping your body cope with thyroid cancer complications.
Some of the precautions that you will need to follow to reduce pain in thyroid cancer are:
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- Learn about the thyroid hormones from your doctor and whether they are important for you to take when you are undergoing treatment or after it.
- Ensure that you take all the follow-up tests recommended by your doctor. This is particularly important for measuring your thyroglobulin level in the blood. You may have to undergo full body scans to in the follow up after the thyroid cancer treatment.
- Learn about all the treatment options for your thyroid cancer, including the benefits and risks associated with them.
Apart from taking these precautions to safeguard against the risk of enduring pain due to thyroid cancer, the patients also have the options of seeking advice or learning from the experience of patients who have undergone the same treatment procedure for the disease. The American Cancer Society actually offers an I Can Cope Program aimed at this. It allows a patient to talk about their condition to other patients, caregivers and supporting staff. People in countries where there are no such facilities may take recourse to online help and look for thyroid cancer patients’ online groups.
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