I have breast cancer and I’m starting radiation tomorrow. I understand that it’s supposed to reduce the risk of reoccurrence and that it is destroying cells. But how? Which cells are affected? Why will it make me tired?
In: Biology
Your doctor is going to be a better resource than Reddit. Radiation is like a hail of tiny bullets passing through the body – smaller than even atoms. It will hit and break apart molecules on its path. Since your cells’ machinery is mostly individual molecules, the pummeling from radiation can do enough damage to kill the cell.
Even if the cell survives, it will have repair work to do. This can be pretty costly, biologically, so when swaths of your body are exposed to radiation it can leave you exhausted as you recover.
The radiation is fired through many paths. Each path passes through different healthy cells, but they all converge on the cancerous area. The result is healthy cells getting a small dose – mostly just needing repairs – while the bad cells get a huge dose and die.
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