Cancer

A friend of mine from work, who is a 38 year-old father of three young kids, has come down with a serious tumour that is putting pressure on a major blood vessel to his heart. I'm glad to say that the doctors are hopeful about treating it as it is a germ-based tumour. They don't know as yet whether it is cancerous or not as they have decided to start a 12-week course of chemo immediately, rather than do a biopsy.

Please remember Graeme, whose wife is a believer, in your prayers.

This has made me look into my understanding of cancer again. What is cancer?

Cancer is a class of diseases or disorders characterized by uncontrolled division of cells and the ability of these cells to invade other tissues, either by direct growth into adjacent tissue through invasion or by implantation into distant sites by metastasis.

Metastasis is the spread of cancer from its primary site to other places in the body. Cancer cells can break away from a primary tumour, penetrate into lymphatic and blood vessels, circulate through the bloodstream, and grow in a distant focus (metastasize) in normal tissues elsewhere in the body. These secondary growths are what we commonly term "secondaries".

Malignant tumours are cancerous. Benign tumours do not invade neighboring tissues and do not seed metastases, but may locally grow to great size. They usually do not return after surgical removal. Still, some tumours with benign histology can behave as malignant tumours, for example in brain tumours, where treatment has to be as aggressive as with malignant disease.

More info can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumour
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastasis