II/7. Cancer: Know Your Enemy
Cancer can strike in hundreds of variations. Learn yours.
Cancer is a deadly enemy within: we will have to learn to know it and live with it, trying to get along, all the while doing all we can to kill it before it kills us.
––John Roberts
Cancer is powerful. It can stop whole lives and start new ones. It is the ultimate dark drama. Cancer brings a crisp urgency to every hour: Live right, live well, live now. Take each day and create. Create good, create love. Cancer touches everyone around it and can bring wisdom and learning. Learning to love and let go.
––Melissa Etheridge, “Elizabeth Edwards, Heroes & Pioneers,”
Time Magazine, May 14, 2007
Granting autonomy to trillions of worker cells invites chaos. When, as usually happens, these cells are well behaved and public-spirited, extraordinarily complex order ensues. But on occasion, a cell may choose to go its own way and invent its own novel version of a tissue or organ. It is then that we see the much-feared chaos that we call cancer…The creation of a tumor is an extraordinarily slow process, often extending over decades. The cells forming a tumor are all linear descendants of a single progenitor, a distant ancestor that lived many years before the tumor mass became apparent. This founder, this renegade cell, decided to go off on its own, to begin its own growth program within one of the body’s tissues. Thereafter, its proliferation was controlled by its own internal agenda rather than the needs of the community of cells around it.
––Robert A. Weinberg, One Renegade Cell, 1998
By the twin forces of local invasion and distant metastasis, a cancer gradually interferes with the functioning of the various tissues of the body. Tubular organs are obstructed, metabolic processes are inhibited, blood vessels are eroded sufficiently to cause minor and sometimes major bleeding, vital centers are destroyed, and delicate biochemical balances are deranged. In time, a point is reached at which life can no longer be sustained.
––Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D., How We Die, 1993
Cancer is a disease of the cells. There are 220 different kinds of cells in the human body, and there are about 100 different forms of cancer. About 14 of them dominate, and most afflict older people. DNA may be inherited with lurking deformities, cells may mutate into something that resists or ignores the usual controls and harmony of the healthy body. Gradually, these aggressive cancer cells multiply, crowd out healthy cells and organs and harm or destroy the body functions that we need to live. Not only do the cancer cells destroy the area or organ where they develop, but they can also metastasize, or migrate, to other areas and organs, find a blood supply, and take root, retaining the characteristics and cure requirements of the original cancer.
In the beginning of a life, all our cells are identical, multiplying from the single, fertilized cell that already contains the healthy attributes of both parents. Eventually, different cells, hearing the directions of their DNA, change into a brain cell or lung cell or heart cell until eventually all 220 different varieties begin to form together their separate organs or functions. Built into each type are limits so that an organ does not keep growing forever. It reaches a size consistent with the age and heritage of the body. Also built in are other forms of wisdom and self-preservation.
In time, some of those cells, old or freshly replaced, may be infected and changed by dangerous forms of chemicals, radiation, viruses, or other causes we do not yet understand. These cancer cells get aggressive, they multiply out of control and refuse to die. As each cell divides and multiplies, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc., the numbers become astronomical and they muscle out the normal cells. The normal functions of the body lose their effectiveness and things begin to go wrong until health and life are endangered. The resulting symptoms and tests may point to a specific cancer and suggest an appropriate treatment.
Cancer patients and caregivers should begin to study cancer in general and their particular cancer by delving into authoritative resources, especially recent and highly-recommended books that can be consulted frequently and absorbed. See this book’s Bibliography. With this foundation, the next step is to search for up-to-date information on the internet, concentrating on those with good reputations and no product to sell. Of course, the doctor, whose time is limited, should be the primary guide.
