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| 25 years ago, at about this time of year, while anxious over finishing my Ph.D, I found out that I had cancer and it would take three weeks for the specialists at Dana Farber to see me. While I had time on my hands I learned about cancer. While we are waiting for the time that I will describe the staging and treatment of my cancer, allow me to give a description of cancer and its treatment in a greatly over-simplified form I hope you find it informative, and will help you to understand how chemotherapy works as I describe it later. |
| CANCER IN A NUTSHELL - PART ONE A DEFINITION AND DESCRIPTION OF CANCER) |
| Cancer is an alteration in a normal cell in the body that causes excess and unrestrained growth and cell division. Each type of cancer is particular to the original cell where it started. (lung cancer or skin cancer, for example, are different diseases) . |
| Excess cell division means the cell does not stop dividing as it would normally. This results in uncontrolled proliferation of the cells in the form of a tumor. This generally happens because the cell remains in an undifferentiated (that is, immature) state. As cells divide they, become more specialized with each step until they reach a state with all of their final functional ability. Recently, it has been discovered that tumors help their proliferation by sending out signals to grow new blood vessels to feed the growing tumor. This is called angiogenesis. |
| The unrestrained part of the growth has two parts. First the cells do not recognize their boundaries. The causes the tumor to invade nearby tissues that do know when stop dividing and respect tissue boundaries. The tumor eventually overwhelms and disrupts the functioning of the normal cells. |
| The second aspect of of unrestrained growth is that cancerous cells can hitch a ride on the lymph or circulatory system to colonize other parts of the body. This process is what makes cancer so hard to treat and how it manifests its most deadly killing method. This process is called metastasis. |
| All of the processes of growth, differentiation, ceasing of growth, and recognition of tissue boundaries are controlled by genes. All genes are contained in your DNA. The causes of cancer are not fully understood, but it is thought most cancers are started by damage to DNA either by chemical, environmental, infectious, hereditary, hormonal or biological factors. This damage either turns some genes on or off. Often times the damage is a mutation, that is a change to the DNA. So cancer starts with an anomaly in DNA, so that is the starting place for treatment. DNA and the life cycle of cells will be described in the next update. |
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To summarize cancer cells: 1) They are immature. 2) They don't respect boundaries. 3) They roam around a lot. 4) They cry out for attention (blood vessel in this case) 5) They have growth spurts. 6) They often have trauma in their early lives. 7) They cause havoc. |
| What does that sound like to you? (scroll down) |
| That's what I would call a juvenile delinquent or an unruly teenager. (Comedy is a common coping method for those with serious disease. I can vouch first hand. It doesn't mean one does not recognize the seriousness of the situation.) |
| PS I would especially like to hear comments from my non-scientist friends as to whether you find the level of technical parts of this series appropriate. |
| Stay tuned for more of the story. |
| (Cancer Chronicles is a series of status updates that account the events of 25 years ago when I went through a bout with cancer. Its purposes are multi-fold: catharsis, education, information, celebration, etc. ) |
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