What exactly is Cancer?
In: Biology
Cells with a mutation that makes them reproduce without stopping like normal cells do. Basically.
My wife explained it to me like this. She was always the smart one.
Regular cells: Yay we grow, spread, and die on schedule, at normal speed. Like we’re following a schedule that’s been given to us via our DNA. Yay for schedules!
Cancer cells: Whatever, I do what I want! Fuck schedules, who needs them. Grow! Spread! And live forever! Sparta!
Cancer is a name for a whole family of different things that can go wrong in your body, all related to one kind of cellular malfunction.
Normally the cells in your body are dividing apart to grow new cells at a certain rate, and do so in response to certain conditions, and this is part of what makes your body able to heal from injuries and damage. The genetic system which controls this division can sometimes go wrong, and this will cause cells to start dividing and growing out of control. Depending on what organ the cells are in, this can have a wide range of bad results.
Basically, cancer happens when cells in your body lose self control. Cells have a set of instructions on how to operate contained in their DNA/genes. Sometimes old cells don’t die like they should and start growing abnormally. They can pass messages to cells around them that makes them grow abnormally also, and this mass of abnormal cells is called a tumor. If the tumor grows slowly and doesn’t spread or destroy other tissues, it’s benign and isn’t what we’d considered cancer, and is typically easily treated with targeted removal. If it grows rapidly, and invades and destroys tissues around it, it is malignant and is what we consider cancer. When it spreads to different organs it has traveled, or metastasized, and it’s very hard to treat conservatively and has a very bad prognosis (chance of recovery).
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