How is cancer so deadly but a person feels fine one day then the next they are told they have 4 months to live?
In: Biology
How is it so deadly? Because it sneaks up on you and crushes your soul. The emotional aspect and logistics are just as part of how bad it is as is the disease itself.
My dad has pancreatic cancer. Started March last year. For a few months, he seemed ok, then gradually things got worse. A lot of the “worse” was the treatment. The radiation treatment made him feel a little ill and the chemo caused him to often lose consciousness or awake but unable to talk. Eventually, we had to stop both. That was about 2 months ago. He got a little better, but suddenly his health declined rapidly. He lost half his body weight (had been losing slowly for weeks, but now it was sudden). Instead of simply not enjoying food and forcing himself to eat it he went to a liquid diet, and eventually a clear liquid one. Now the only things he “eats” are ensure (the clear version) and popsicles. We can’t even get him to drink much of the ensure anymore. He’s on pain pills that he takes every 2 hours (dilaudid, 2 hours later 10 mg oxy, 2 hours later dilaudid, etc). He went from walking to walker to wheelchair to wheelchair but someone has to put him in it, take him out, and wheel him around. We had a hospice nurse, but with the corona virus we cant even get that now. I just finished a 1:30pm to 12pm the following day “shift” until a sibling could relieve me. During this time I had to pick him out of his chair or bed, put him in the wheelchair, and bring him to the bathroom to attempt to urinate or defecate (which he can succeed at only about 1/2 the time) approximately 12-15 times. I kinda lost count. I tried to sleep when i could, but he needs help more often than once an hour, so it isn’t that restful. During this time, he wet his bed once and had 4 or 5 bouts of diarrhea. He can’t wipe himself. Hell, he can’t even lower his adult diapers on his own. Trying to support him and wipe him at the same time, while not making a mess is unfun to say the least. It takes him roughly 10-20 seconds to process and respond to any question. He hates every moment of life and wants to die, but suicide isn’t an option for a number of reasons and would also stop the family from life insurance benefits. He’s worried about fucking life insurance! Love you dad, but you are LONG past having to provide for us. I just want you to be comfortable and happy, or at least as much as you can be given the circumstances. This is the kind of shit you may not be aware of regarding being a caretaker for someone with cancer. Its not just a sick person lying in bed with occasional doctor visits.
My dad worked his ass off from the day he got out of college up to his final year with the same company. He was looking to retire at age 63 and get to spend the money he earned and enjoy himself. Instead, he has my mother talking to the HR dept with his company while he sits alone in a hospital bed an hour away from home. That was 3 months ago now. We were only eligible for hospice like a month ago and 24/7 hospice for maybe 4 or 5 days before the coronavirus became a thing serious enough that they couldn’t do it. Fuck cancer. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy and my father, through all his faults, was an amazing and awesome guy who took taking care of his family to a level that I have never heard of in others. And for all he did, for all the work he put into life, he had his retirement years stolen from him.
Oh, and to top it off, my mother has cancer too, ended up diagnosed about a month before my father. Multiple Myeloma for her, Pancreatic for him. Hers isn’t nearly as serious though (as in its not basically an immediate death sentence), but it’s still super bad and she has permanent damage to her back and has horrible neuropathy in her hands and feet. She was lucky enough that treatment worked for her and she was able to go into remission. She(barely) gets around with a walker. But shes entirely incapable of taking care of herself, much less him. I had quit my job to take care of them and get them to doctors appts and chauffeur them around. I get calls at all hours of the day for dropped pills or needing to be lifted or food or supplies or groceries because i am gifted/cursed with being a very light sleeper, so they can call and rouse me unlike my siblings. Plus I live somewhat near them. On top of this, I have to be EXTRA cautious about COVID-19 because its probably a death sentence for either of them. Admittedly, it might be a blessing for my father.
I guess my whole point is that cancer kills the person from the inside out, slow at first, but the symptoms get worse and worse and worse until its just too much. They become a husk of their former self. The last doctor we spoke with said my dad could pass any day now, maybe a month at the absolute most. It’s the worst experience of my parents’ lives and absolutely the worst part of mine. I have debt up the kazoo and no idea how I’m going to pay it off. Its almost comical… I’m considering just going and living with my parents. Out of necessity on both our parts.
Cancer tears your family apart. My dad’s side has only my grandfather and his brother (who visited for a single day but once over the entirety of the illness), and my mom was adopted and never close to her side other than her immediate adopted parents, both of whom have already passed.
My grandfather is depressed and while cancer free, has any number of other problems. I’m the oldest sibling and am about to be more or less responsible for the keeping the rest together and for dealing with the will, funeral, and any number of other things that I am sure will pop up and I have no concept of how to deal with.
I was trying to finish my education with my free time I have (not much else to do while i sit around waiting for the next bathroom break or meal to cook for them), studied for certifications I could use to find another job after they pass, but testing centers are all closed down now. Probably shoulda saved that cash for the rent.
Sorry, I feel i may have gotten off topic, but I’ve now typed too much and I am delirious from lack of sleep, but somehow can’t get myself to go lay down and crash.
Scrolled a bit to see if anyone mentioned the metabolism and didn’t see it.
The cells divide rapidly yes, but what is important is all of those cells need nutrients, oxygen, and to have wastes removed to survive. Your bodies normal cells are eventually starved of nutrients, essentially bullied by the abnormal cancer cells. This increases the amount of calories you use per day, which is why cancer patients tend to lose weight drastically without effort.
Lots of answers on here but they don’t cover all the important answers to the question/ELI5.
‘Feeling fine’: the sort of things that make you feel unwell are (as mentioned by another poster) infections (your body reacting to the infection and you get those flu like symptoms), blood loss (making you tired), and tissue destruction (pain). A further way you can feel unwell is from a lack of available energy (again being tired) because something in your body is using it up such as your immune system fighting a bad infection, a condition that sets of a strong inflammatory response such as major burns, trauma, pancreatitis etc, or because cancer (which has a very high metabolism) has spread across your body. Cancer can be growing for a long time before it spreads or causes tissue destruction and only some of them cause blood loss; colorectal (bowel) cancer being the prime example. The big problem with cancer is that it can be asymptomatic for such a long time, hence the importance of cancer screening programs like the good old colonoscopy for colorectal cancer.
‘4 months to live’: thankfully this situation doesn’t happen as often as you may think, there are a huge number of people who have had their cancer and are still here to tell the tale. The 4 months to live situation occurs when cancer has spread to other organs. You can think of the cancer as an island nation, slowly growing in population and once the population is high enough they send out ships to other island to colonise them (the cancer spreading). Just like human populations the cancer cell populations grown exponentially and once you’ve found cancer in another part of the body (from a CT scan for example) then it’s probably in lots of other places too. This leads to a higher risk of all the things listed about that cause symptoms and ultimately death.
Depends where the cancer is
Something like pancreatic cancer will grow causing no problems with the body, then it grows so big it presses on a bile duct and causes issues, scans show the tumour being so far along.
Many tumours won’t cause any problems until they grow to a size where they start squeezing the stuff around them. For example my grandmother had kidney cancer but it wasn’t interfering with her kidney function but it causes havoc everytime it grew enough to put pressure on her liver. Without symptoms people don’t go see the doctor and things progress, hence why pancreatic cancer has such a terrible mortality rate.
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