Managing patient’s medical records:
It’s a good move to assemble your own copy of all records that you can access whenever you need to. It’s mostly difficult for patients to battle the disease and maintain medical records as well, so a near and dear one must manage the medical records of the patient. Some benefits of doing this are: It will allow the close relative or friend to share accurate information about patient’s health history with the team who is going to plan and do patient’s treatment. It will save patient’s time when needs to get a second opinion or start going to a new doctor. The close relation or patient can possibly learn more about patient’s diagnosis and illness, otherwise they would be reading parts of patient’s records such as his/her doctor’s notes. Patient can avoid to have unnecessarily repeat medical tests. A close relative or patient won’t have to worry about losing the records if a medical practice or facility closes, patient’s doctor retires, or some of his/her older records were destroyed because a facility was not legally required to save them for long time period.
Sticking with the treatment consistently:
Breast cancer treatment is a long-term commitment. Primary treatments such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy can call for trips to the hospital or doctor’s office for quite a few months. Patient/ survivor also may need to take medications for up to 5 or even 10 extra years to lower the risk that the malignant cells will come back. You’ll get the finest outcomes from treatment when you follow your plan completely and on time. Doctors often call this “full compliance” or “full adherence.” Sticking with the treatment can be challenging though, especially after the first few months. Be consistent with it.