"I'm going to send you down to Oncology." Those are the words we all dread hearing our family doctor say, because it means we have cancer or at least are at risk for having cancer. Cancer is the #1 medical fear for many Canadians. We would rather have a rhinoplasty in Ontario or even an amputation than cancer. However, the rise in cancer rates means that oncology is a growing field with many job opportunities. Whether you're morbidly curious or looking for a new career, this article will give you more information on oncology.

Oncology is derived from the Greek words for "mass" or "tumor" and "study of," which makes oncologists the type of medical specialty that deals with all forms of cancer. To become an oncologist, you will have to do your undergraduate sciences degree followed by medical school followed by a further four years of specialty university training. By this point most people have accumulated enough student debt to buy several homes for sale on PEI. The upshot of this is that oncologists are in high demand and are very well paid.

So what does an oncologist do? Oncologists handle every type of cancer at every stage from prevention to palliative care. You might be sent to speak to an oncologist because your family doctor worries that your careless use of industrial water treatment chemicals may lead to cancer in the future and he or she wants you "scared straight." You might also be sent to an oncologist if your doctor merely suspects but has not yet confirmed that you have some type of cancer.

Many people believe that a referral to an oncologist is akin to a death sentence, but that's not the case at all. Oncologists aren't just there to tell the palliative care nurse to slap some diapers on you and give you a pain killer while you die. They're there to help you fight the cancer with the most aggressive treatments that have the highest chance of success. If there is a way to beat your cancer, your oncologist will find it. Therefore being an oncologist isn't only about easing people's deaths but also about saving their lives.

Much like an engineer might be tapped to design some new Worthington pump parts, oncologists might also spend their time in laboratories trying to develop new forms of cancer treatment and better ways of detecting cancer earlier. If you see an oncologist for tests, such as a biopsy or MRI, or for radiation or chemotherapy, these are all the results of previous work by lab based oncologists.