For example, if someone discovers they have breast cancer or cancer in the liver or something, does that mean that they always had cancer but it was not able to be detected until they discovered they had it? Or is that something that is formed later, and wasn’t always in that person’s body?
In: Biology
Cells have two very important functions. Make more copies of themselves, and self-destruct if they are damaged or unhealthy.
A cell becomes cancerous when the instructions for these two functions gets messed up, causing the cell to make copies of itself very quickly and never self destruct. What you end up with is a big clump of cells (called a tumor) that slowly grows and grows over time. Eventually, pieces of this tumor can break off and spread all over your body, settling down and forming new tumors wherever they landed. Eventually, if the tumors are not treated, they will start messing up all the other parts of your body that keep you alive, leading to your death.
When we do chemotherapy, we’re giving you medicine that attacks your whole body, but especially the cancer cells. That’s why it’s effective at treating cancer, but also makes you feel incredibly sick.
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