Cancer: Familiarize Yourself With Its Symptoms

It’s not just cancer that every individual, young or old, should be well aware of. All major diseases, that can prove to be fatal if ignored or overlooked, require being well informed about. The need? Well, awareness can clearly help one take necessary precautions and detect such diseases at early stages leading to being effectively treated. Now all of us would definitely not want to die due to carelessness and ignorance!

Content:

Malignant Neoplasm is the scientific term for the disease Cancer. Even after the vast technological and scientific advancements, medical science is yet to find a complete cure to this disease. Doctors, around the world have just one thing to say – Early diagnosis is the only savior (excluding Leukemia). While it continues to be one of the most dreaded diseases, experts’ advice that all individuals should be thoroughly aware of the disease and its symptoms, coupled with regular checkups to help discover the disease soon enough to be cured. So here is a walk-through, addressing the major symptoms of the disease.

The Disease

Cancer refers to a collective group of diseases which exhibits the uncontrolled division and growth of abnormal cells. These cells have the ability to multiply and therefore spread to the neighboring areas as well, at a very fast pace. Additionally there is no defined area or organ from

where this disease originates, because of which there are a 100 different types of cancers which are named after the organ of origin. For instance the cancer originating from the melanocytes of skin are termed as melanoma cancer whereas when the organ of origin is the colon its termed as colon cancer. They can however be grouped into 5 broad categories namely:

Carcinoma: originating from within tissues or skins that cover or line various internal organs

Sarcoma: originating from cartilage, muscle, bone, fat and various other supportive or connective tissues

Leukemia: originating from the tissues that form blood like the bone marrow

Lymphoma and Myeloma: originating from immune cells

Central Nervous System Cancers: originating from tissues of the spinal cord and brain

Signs and Symptoms

Abnormal weight loss: Wight, if found to be reducing at abnormal rates like 10kgs at a time, can be early signs of cancers of stomach, pancreas or esophagus.

Fever: This is a common symptom of the disease that occurs at some point or the other for all kinds of cancer. This may also happen post the treatment as well due to its effect on the immune system.

Fatigue: The kind of tiredness that doesn’t get over even after rest, could well be early symptoms of blood cancer (leukemia) or stomach or colon cancer (due to blood loss through stool or urine)

Pain: Prolonged pain may be signs of testicular or bone cancers. Again prolonged headaches can be symptoms of brain tumors. Ovary, rectum or colon cancers can lead to back pains that just don’t go away. Irrespective of the area, occurrence of pain would generally mean the disease has spread already.

Symptoms on skin: Most cancers have also been observed to show skin ailments like hyperpigmentation, jaundice like yellow eyes and skin, reddening of skin, excessive itching and increased growth of hair on skin.

The following symptoms should also be noted:

Prolonged constipation, blood through urine or passing urine too often may be signs of colon, prostate or bladder cancers.

Sores on the sin or in the mouth that do not heal could well be symptoms of skin and oral cancers respectively. Sores on private areascan also be signs of the disease.

White spots or patches on the tongue or the mouth coupled with frequent irritations can be early symptoms of oral or mouth cancer.

Coughing up blood, blood in stool, bleeding that is abnormal in behavior, or blood through the nipple may be witnesses in advanced stages of lung, rectal/colon, cervix and breast cancer respectively.

Lumps in the breasts may are typical symptoms of breast cancer.

Swallowing or indigestion problems may be symptoms of cancer in the esophagus, pharynx or stomach.

A mole, wart or freckle that shows a size, shape and color change can be a symptom of melanoma cancer.

Cough and hoarseness in the voice that persists may be signs of lung and voice-box/ thyroid cancer respectively.

Cancer as a disease is still being researched for the ultimate cure (drug or treatment). While it does have various drugs and chemotherapy sessions as its treatment, but the success rates of the disease being completely cured is still low, unless the organ has the option of being removed from the body (which again does not have a 100% success rate). Institutes like the Tata Memorial Center situated in Mumbai and Kolkata; and Fortis Hospital in Gurgaon, Apollo Cancer Hospital, Chennai, Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology, Bangalore and Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute, Delhi are amongst the top cancer treatment hospitals in India.

If there is more that you would want to know about cancer and how to deal with it, post us your comments and queries. We would love to address them.

Author Bio:

In these years since I have graduated, I Simi Ahuja, have been working with the institutions providing health-care & medical treatments and have gathered tons of information about the doctors, hospitals and related things in Delhi-NCR. In this article, I have shared information about the various symptoms of cancer. To know about the hospitals in Delhi NCR where cancer treatment is done, you can visit Credihealth.com.