hello, my uncle has just died of bone cancer. he was thought to have cured himself of lung cancer about four years

Question: hello, my uncle has just died of bone cancer. he was thought to have cured himself of lung cancer about four years before because he was a very strong smoker, however he was on stage four and he had tried all different kinds of medication such as radio therapy all the way down to homeopathy. however the doctors and nurses new he didn't have a chance to survive. he didn't want to have more radio therapy but the doctors wanted him to but they new it wouldn't effect his life length. so why do you give radio therapy when you know that it will make them ill and possibly weaker and you know that there not going to survive anyway and it has a low chance of actually making you live longer!
- Keywords:
  cancer,
  radiotherapy
Asked by slj1997 to Charlotte, Dhvanil, Frank, Jim, Leila on 13 Mar 2013.
- Dhvanil Karia answered on 13 Mar 2013:
  
  @slj1997 I am sad to hear that your uncle went though cancer. Firstly the reason he could have got bone cancer was because the initial lung cancer he had would have been malignant (that which spreads across the whole body like leukemia). As for the treatments, radiotherapy is used for 2 purposes
  1) Cure of cancer
  
  Destroying the disease completely using radiation. This is not possible in every patient
  
  2) Palliative cure
  
  Cancer after sometime grows out of the main organ and starts affecting different parts of the body which cause pain (like the vertebral colums/spine, lung, stomach) to the patient. The cancer is spread too badly for the patient to be saved so to take away the pain of the patient they are sometimes given radiotherapy treatment so the affected regions causing pain are destroyed and patient has better life till the end of his/her days
- Leila Nichol answered on 13 Mar 2013:
  
  I’m very sorry to hear about your uncle. Unfortunately detecting cancer when it’s at a late stage is more difficult to cure. It’s sounds like your uncle’s cancer spread in the form of bone metastases. Unfortunately, not all treatment works for everyone.
  
  As Dhvanil says, sometimes we deliver radiation with the intent of completely curing the cancer and killing all remaining cancer cells. This does depend on the staging of the cancer. And sometimes, as it sounds in the case of your uncle radiation is used for pain relief. If someone has a low chance of survival we try and make them as comfortable as possible. But some people would rather just not have it and use their remaining time for other things than attending hospital.
  
  Cancer is a terrible disease, and it is different person to person, and for each individual we have an excellent team planning a specific treatment for them. But sometimes, it just doesn’t work. It’s very sad when there’s nothing you can do.