I know what a tumor is, but can someone explain what terminal cancer is and what is it about cancer that can kill/ cause permanent damage to your body?
In: Biology
I’ll use lung cancer since it is the easiest to make a point with.
Cancer is basically a part of you deciding to grow out of control. That is a tumor. Something like a lung cell starting to multiply out of control. The body only has so much room and organs must be structured as they are to operate properly.
In the case of lung cancer, the cancerous cells start to fill the airways of the lung. The cancerous cells also don’t operate as they should and don’t grow where they should, so they don’t absorb oxygen right either. Eventually, the lungs become more “lung” than airway and you suffocate. With other organs, it simply impairs the function until it fails. There’s also the issue of those cancerous cells getting into the bloodstream and taking root elsewhere, growing in the lymph nodes and getting into the brain and whatnot.
In short, cancerous cells cannot function as normal cells and grow out of control, crushing organs or overtaking them and shutting them down. When enough or an important enough organ fails or enough organs are infected… then it’s only a matter of time, unfortunately. Since the cancer cells are YOUR cells just… not functioning normally, you can’t kill it that easily without killing good cells as well. This is why removal, chemo, and targeted radiation are used. The idea is basically to burn the building and hope that the infestation dies before the host does. Hopefully normal, healthy healing should outlast the cancer cells. It’s also why it’s so hard to develop a cure.
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