What exactly is so deadly about cancer?

Well, I'll tell you how it killed my brother. He had an abdominal tumor, most likely started in the pancreas. The tumor destroyed half of his pancreas, totally smashed his spleen, pressed against his stomach and started invading it. He was nauseated all the time and could hardly eat anything because the food would cause his stomach to expand and press against the tumor. He would then puke up his food. The pancreas itself is very important in the digestion of food. It creates bile and sends it into the stomach and intestines which helps the body utilize the food and use it for nutrition. Therefore, when your pancreas is destroyed, your body doesn't get the nutrition it needs to survive. The growing cancerous tumor itself also steals all the calories and nutrition from the food as well as from the body, which is one reason why cancer patients often lose a lot of weight. So, the way brother died was his pancreas was destroyed and failed, then his liver started to fail, and then his heart failed and he died. It was a combination of multiple organ failure plus starvation.

Cancer. We've all heard of it. But what exactly is this strange disease? The truth is, it is a mutation.

Cancer starts when a cell mutates. A cell usually is a complete copy of the parent cell unless a mutation occurs during mitosis. This means that the hereditary material of the cell is different from that of the parent cell. In other words, the new cell will behave and possible look different from its parent cell. Sometimes a mutation also occurs when a cell is exposed to harmful materials like raditation.

One of the most common mutations cause cells to reproduce when the two new cells are not needed. This causes the cell to reproduce rapidly, and the new, mutated cells quickly outnumber the old cells. The tumor will still be extremely small after ten years and a second mutation may have occurred. This may cause the cells to reproduce even more rapidly.

Then another mutation may arise, such as disabling a cell's self-destruct (the self-destruct causes a cell to explode when it has been compromised). This causes the cell to reproduce even faster. Then a few more mutations may arise. Soon, however, the tumor will break through the cells' membrane, which provid a barrier. Now that the tumor has access to the blood vessels, angeogenisis, or the growth of new blood vessels, occurs. With the nutrients the blood vessels provide, the tumor grows faster still. The tumor also begins to send smaller tumor cells into the blood stream. By this time the tumor is now big enough to be detected, although not identified, where as it was previously small enough to avoid detection, it is about as big as a small grape.

A tumor with the weight of a gram can discharge over a million tumor cells into the blood stream each day. There is a very small chance of the survival of these tumors. This is called metastasizing and it is what makes tumors so deadly. While only one in 10,000 cells survive, one more colony is all it takes to kill someone. The deaths are caused by the tumors eventual interference with the body's functions.

I'll try to explain this the best way I can. Cancer cells are a foreign object within the body or organ that it inhabits. It basically replaces good cells with bad ones and does not allow the body and/or organ to function properly. Imagine a beautiful lawn of green grass. Once a foreign object enters that lawn, be it an insect or a disease such as fungus or something else, it slowly destroys the roots of the grass so that the grass cannot grow and function properly. Sometimes you can catch the foreign object and eradicate it with treatment and stop it from growing and sometimes unfortunately you can't and it kills your entire lawn. Basically the bad overcomes the good. How's that?

the abnormal cells which spread to make it even deadlier

the cells are abnormal. the cells run our whole body.

the cells are abnormal. the cells run our whole body .