If you have cancer or are caring for someone with cancer, maybe “cure” is the word you want to hear more than any other. It's also a word that most doctors won't say.

Unlike other diseases, cancer has its language: there is no cure, but there are treatments that can cure some people of certain types of cancer.

When you understand the difference, it makes all the difference.

Understand cancer

'Fruit' is a generic term that you use to cover many different types: apples, cranberries, pineapple, etc. Likewise, 'cancer' is a collective term for more than 200 types, including cancers of the bladder, brain, breast, colon, eye, kidney, liver, lung, ovary, and skin.

When you have cancer, abnormal cells develop, divide, and destroy healthy tissue in your body. Some varieties grow slowly; others spread rapidly. Each type starts in a different part of your body and has its degrees, stages, and symptoms.

Since every cancer is different, there is no one-size-fits-all cure. But sometimes people can say they are cured if their cancer seems to go away with treatment. But it's not that simple.

Healed vs cured vs remission

For centuries, doctors have used the word 'cure' to describe a medical condition that has completely disappeared and will never return. For example, if you have appendicitis and the doctors remove the appendix, you are cured.

In cancer parlance, 'cure' works differently.

Doctors can give you the best perspective on whether or not cancer will come back, based on statistics from large groups of people. But no doctor can guarantee that you will recover.

There are two reasons for this:

Doctors still don't know everything about the disease. Some cancer cells can remain somewhere in the body and can grow, divide, and become a new tumors. So the doctors don't say you're cured.

Instead of talking about 'cure', most medical professionals use the word 'treatment'. If you are on treatment and your cancer does not return for the rest of your life, you are considered cured.

'Remission' is another keyword. It means your cancer symptoms are gone. It differs from a cure in that the remission does not always last for the rest of your life.

Treatment

There is no cure for all types of cancer, but there are treatments that can cure you.

Many people are treated for cancer, live the rest of their lives, and die of other causes. Many more are treated for cancer and still die from it, even though the treatment may give them more time: even years or decades.

Common types of cancer treatments include:

• operation
• chemotherapy
• radiation
• bone marrow transplant
• immunotherapy
• Hormone therapy
• Targeted drug therapy
• Clinical tests
• palliative care

Treatment plans are tailored based on the type of cancer, its progression, your general health, and your preferences. Progress, not perfection

One way or another, cancer research has been going on for over 200 years.

While there is no cure, much progress has been made. It may not be fast enough when you have cancer. But there are more treatment options now than there were 5 years ago.

Doctors today have a better understanding of how to find many types of cancer in the early stages. They also have more treatments to try if one doesn't work.

As researchers learn more, they understand how much one type of cancer differs from another.

Scientists have learned, for example, that breast cancer is not all the same. There are four main types and each has specific treatments.

Cancer researchers study things like what causes certain types of cancer to grow so they can develop treatments to stop it. These include drugs that change how a cancer cell works and treatments that use your body's immune system to attack cancer cells.

In the language of doctors, there has been a dramatic improvement in results. This means fewer people are dying from cancer, but there is still no cure.