Patience is a virtue . . . sometimes. For people with cancer, patience can be deadly–but they often have no alternative. A treatment can take months to shrink a tumor measurably, slow tumor growth, or prove itself ineffective. While doctors and patients wait on such sluggish gauges of success or failure, friends and family agonize, patients suffer side effects, and the cancer may be spreading undetected throughout the body.
Log in
Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.