The word palliate means to alleviate or to moderate intensity.  In the context of cancer care, palliative care means to focus medical care or treatment on preventing or relieving suffering associated with serious illness.  In the United States, palliative care can be a part of medical care at various times during the course of an illness – during treatment or when there are no options for further treatment.  When a person has received several different medical treatments and the cancer has not responded, it may have become resistant to all treatment. At this time, a patient has to make a very serious decision.  If you want to continue treatment to fight your cancer as long as you can, you still need to consider the odds that more treatment will have any benefit.  It’s important to weigh the possible limited benefit of a new treatment against the possible downsides, including the stress of getting treatment and the side effects that come with. No matter what you decide to do, it is important that you be as comfortable as possible.  

Make sure you are asking for and getting treatment for any symptoms you might have, such as pain. This type of treatment is called “palliative” treatment.  Palliative treatment helps relieve cancer-related symptoms, but it is not expected to cure the disease; its main purpose is to improve your quality of life.  Sometimes, the treatments you get to control your symptoms are similar to the treatments used to treat cancer.  For example, radiation therapy might be given to help relieve bone pain, or chemotherapy might be given to help shrink a tumor and keep it from pressing on surrounding nerves or from causing a bowel obstruction.

Sometimes, palliative care and hospice care are used interchangeably and this may result in confusion.  Hospice care, most often means a change in focus from treatment of a life-threatening disease to a focus on relief of symptoms with an understanding that all possible treatments to cure the disease have been exhausted.  Palliative care is a major focus of hospice care.  Palliative care initially evolved from hospice care, however, it has expanded to include the relief of symptoms associated with curative treatment as well. 

Whether it is during the time of treatment or when there are no options for further treatment, relief or palliation of symptoms can be very important to preserving one’s quality of life.