I've met face to face, a number of real life cancer patients, including the ones who are dying, and also the ones who endured the last days of their lives. Sad, stressful, depressive, pain, lost and anger. Those are the feelings which came through to most cancer patients. Why me? The question keeps going through your brain and you feel puzzled and angry. Some people thought they have been on a healthy diet and exercise, but why they still develop cancer.
The diagnosis of cancer can be a scary thing. To maintain some sense of control in your treatment process, it helps to understand how doctors diagnose, classify, and treat cancers. Researches find that each of us carries the seeds of our own destruction in our DNA, called oncogenes, or genetic messages that can turn on and trigger a cancer. Think of genes as 'loading the gun', and lifestyle such as nutrition, 'pulling the trigger' om this gun. Meaning, just because your family has a tendency toward cancer, does not mean that you are doomed to get cancer. Lifestyle is at least 90% responsible for cancer, while genes play a 5-10% role. This is suppose to be good news, because it means that you can do something about 'silencing' these oncogenes through lifestyle.
In this post, I would want to talk about benign and malignant tumors, and also how cancer spread as well as different kinds of tumors. I will also discuss how cancer is diagnosed and different stages of cancer. I will try to be as less technical as possible, and provide a concise explanation and details for all of you readers out there.
Firstly, let's talk about benign versus malignant tumors. Tumors do not always threaten our lives. Some tumors, such as freckles, moles and fatty lumps in the skin, do not invade the rest of the body, hence, do not cause death.
Malignant tumors differ in at least two respects:
- They put down roots and begin to burrow into the tissue of your body.
- They spread through the body by generating enzymes that break down your tissue and also send out 'seed' cells to start a new colony somewhere else in your body.
Rarely does anyone die from a lump or bump tumor. It is the spreading, that does the damage. While different cancers in different part of the body behave somewhat differently, almost all cancers share the common features of being abnormal cells that spread throughout the body and lay down roots to penetrate healthy tissues.
Usually, the cancer begins in one spot in the body and spreads via various means. Rarely, several cancers begin in different parts of the body and spread. Tumors can lay down roots and burrow into the tissues nearby, like carrots growing into the earth.
Your body has two separate blood vessels systems. One is pumping of red blood cells by the heart through miles of arteries and veins. The other network involves the much smaller lymphatic vessels, which carry lymph, a milky liquid that is full of immune cells, for battles against invaders, as well as toxins and waste products for elimination. Some cancers spread through lymphatic system, which is why your doctor choose to remove a lymph node near the cancer, to see if it contains malignant tissue.
There are different kinds of tumors, and they are categorized as carcinomas, sarcomas, lymphomas and leukemia. For carcinomas, these tumors grow in the tissues, that line internal organs. Most carcinomas grow in an organ that secretes something. For instance, lung tissue secretes mucus, breast tissue secretes milk, and prostate tissue secretes a milky fluid that contributes to sperm semen.
As for sarcomas, these cancers develop in supporting or connective tissue, such as muscles, tendons, bones, nerves or blood vessels. A carcinoma may eventually develop a sarcoma, depending on the site of the spread.
Next, we have lymphomas and leukemias, these tumors develop in the lymph glands or bone marrow. Lymphomas are generally divided into Hodgkin's or non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. Meanwhile, leukemia is either chronic or acute, which is faster and slower stages of development.
Whenever possible, the surgeon removes a section of the tumor and sends it to a doctor who specialized in tissue examinations, a pathologist, for assessment on how fast the cancer grows. By assessing where the cancer is growing, and how fast, and how fats it is spreading, doctors have developed a system of deciding which protocol to put you on. The TNM system of defining the stage of cancer, has been embraced by oncologists through the world. T stands for tumor size. N stands for number of lymph nodes found positive with cancer. And M, stands for the presence of metastasis. Other oncologists speak of Stage 1, means no metastasis, and through stage 2A and B, then 3A and B, and culminating in stage 4, which is considered as metastasis cancers.
While early diagnosis of cancer is crucial for improved outcome, most people still do not involve themselves in routine cancer screening techniques. Hence, most cancer patients come to their doctor with a lump or bump, or soreness, or even bloody stools or urine, for first sign of a health problem.
Physical exam is the starting point for many cancer patients examining lymph nodes for signs of swelling, pap smear for cervical cancer, digital rectum exam for prostate cancer and the list goes on. There are also blood tests, markers in the blood that can be non specific indicators of cancer somewhere in the body. Tumor markers can also very useful for the doctor to track substances in the blood that relate to the cancer getting better or worse. But, none of these tumors markers are perfect. All include a certain percentage of false positive and false negative results.
Imaging techniques in modern medicine has developed some fabulous devices for finding the cancer. X-ray can see through tissue and identify differences in the density of tissue, such as a tumor versus healthy tissue. X-ray can easily tell the difference between bone and soft flesh. We then have PET scans, especially popular diagnosis method practices in United States, requires the doctor to inject radioactive-labeled glucose into the blood stream, then use a type of counter like device to locate the glucose, because cancer is a sugar feeder, taking it up more than its share of sugar in the bloodstream.
Then we have biopsy. By taking a sample of the suspect tissue, the doctor can have a pathologist examine the tumor for staging and deciding what protocol to offer for the patient. By the way, does anyone even know there is something called Chemo Sensitivity Test? There are a lot of doctors who DO NOT tell patients about this test, which is to determine if that specific proposed chemo treatment, is effective to the particular cancer. Shouldn't all of us at least deserve to know if the chemo treatment given are effective or not?
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