The Importance of Palliative Care for Patients With Mesothelioma

Palliative care is one of the best tools a mesothelioma patient can use, even very soon after their diagnosis. This comfort-focused care can help improve quality of life, make curative treatments easier to manage, and may even extend some patients’ lives.

Mesothelioma Hope’s Oncology Social Worker, Lindsey Rotnem, LISW-S, shared information on what patients should know about palliative care in our recent monthly support group meeting.

Below, Lindsey shares some of those insights on the benefits of mesothelioma palliative care and what patients should consider as they get started.

What Is Palliative Care?

Palliative care is specialized treatment and support for anyone with a serious illness, and can help anyone at any age with any stage of mesothelioma.

Palliative care focuses on managing symptoms — like pain, nausea, or anxiety — and can assist with goals of care, advance directives, spiritual support, and end-of-life planning. Treatment can involve anything from medication adjustments to holistic recommendations, such as acupuncture.

Palliative care often gets looped in with hospice, as palliative care was created from the hospice movement. But palliative care doesn’t mean that a person is near death. Hospice is a specific type of palliative care that is delivered near the end of life, whereas palliative care can help a patient transition into hospice when that time comes. Palliative care can involve treatment; on the other hand, treatment ceases during hospice, as it takes an approach of increasing comfort and transitioning into death.

Interested in learning more about palliative care and how other mesothelioma patients are using it? Join our support group for monthly conversations about this and much more.

Pain Management Versus Palliative Care

Palliative care focuses on specialized pain management for patients with serious illnesses like mesothelioma, whereas pain management specialists usually do not focus on pain caused by these complex, serious illnesses.

Pain management also doesn’t offer additional assistance, such as emotional support and advance care planning, often provided by a multidisciplinary team of physicians, social workers, nurses and chaplains.

Palliative care also provides goal of care conversations — which are crucial for anyone experiencing a mesothelioma diagnosis, as it’s important to understand your treatment options and goals moving forward.

Why Palliative Care Is Important During Your Mesothelioma Journey

Research has shown that patients who participate in palliative care during a cancer diagnosis have better quality of life, improved mental health, and increased survival rates when compared to patients with cancer who are not enrolled in palliative care.

One of the patients I help positively attributes palliative care to his anxiety management, stating that his provider was able to prescribe medication to assist with mesothelioma-induced anxiety.

Palliative care can assist with “taking control” of your health, allowing you to make educated decisions on how you want to move forward, allowing time to plan and focus on what is most important to you.

When to Seek Support From Palliative Care

At diagnosis! The main goal of palliative care is to improve quality of life and can be given alongside any treatment and at any stage. Though palliative care is a specialty, your primary medical team may be able to provide these services if there isn’t a palliative care department near you.

Discussing certain topics during palliative treatment can be emotionally taxing, especially when we are discussing our goals related to our medical care, forcing us to face our own mortality.

When the sadness from this reality starts to take hold of our emotional state, one of our support group members takes comfort in the song from country singer Tim McGraw: “Live Like You Were Dying.”

We Can Help You Find Mesothelioma Palliative Care

Our goal is to help patients live longer, fuller lives — and palliative care can play a big part in that. Our team is standing by to help you learn how to choose a palliative care provider for mesothelioma symptom management and start on a treatment journey that makes sense for you.

Mesothelioma Hope’s Patient Advocates can: