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The word metastatic describes cancers that have spread to other parts of the body than the part in which the cancer originated. It usually indicates a severe form of cancer.
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Metastatic Term Timeline in Being Mortal
The timeline below shows where the term Metastatic appears in Being Mortal. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Introduction
...including one about Joseph Lazaroff—a city administrator in his 60s who is suffering from a metastatic prostate cancer. Lazaroff loses weight, his body fills with fluid, and one day he can’t...
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Chapter 2
...for her age, but she faces everything from arthritis and incontinence to what might be metastatic colon cancer. Gawande thinks that the doctor could focus on the most potentially life threatening...
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Chapter 6
...is U-shaped, with an average cost of $94,000 during the last year of life with metastatic breast cancer, for example. Doctors are good at prescribing treatments but not at knowing when...
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...treatment decisions in terminally ill patients, but the strategy backfired. Nelene Fox was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 1991, when she was 38. The cancer spread to her bone marrow...
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...night before. She was having an ovarian cyst removed when the gynecologist discovered she had metastatic colon cancer. He removed a section of her colon, but the cancer spread widely. Gawande...
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Chapter 7
...father’s visits with Benzel, Gawande started seeing a 72-year-old patient named Jewel Douglass who had metastatic ovarian cancer. Douglass had been in treatment for two years, and most patients at her...
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