YOUR CANCER YOUR LIFE – STAGES OF CANCER (TYPES)
You are probably wondering why your practitioner can’t tell by a blood test whether or not your cancer has spread through the bloodstream. Remember how tiny the cancer cells are? They travel fn the blood singly or in very small groups and there are only very few of them in the bloodstream at any one time. This means that the chances of actually seeing them in a small sample of blood are minute. The only way we can know they have been in the bloodstream is by finding secondary growths in other parts of the body.
There are also some types of cancer which develop in many different places throughout the body from the start. These cancers include leukaemias, myeloma and many lymphomas. Leukaemias and myeloma begin in the bone marrow. The bone marrow is where we form new blood cells. In a child it occupies most bones but in adults it is concentrated in the central bones—spine, ribs, skull, pelvis and upper parts of arms and legs. Because leukaemias and myeloma are cancers of certain types of white blood cells, they begin where those white cells are normally formed, which is throughout the bone marrow. With leukaemias, the cancerous white blood cells can be found in a blood sample whereas in most cases of myeloma they are not released into the blood and can be found only in a bone marrow specimen.
The lymphomas are a group of cancers which originate in the lymph system. Most of these appear in many different nodes at the same time. There are some types, such as Hodgkin’s disease, which tend to spread in a fairly orderly and predictable way from one group of nodes to another and, in some cases, can be successfully treated with radiation therapy directed only to the affected parts of the body.
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