Rants and Rambles

Cancer or tumors in general, cancerous or not, have been in evidence for ages. So have some pretty “advanced” treatments. While we may attribute it to an opening of a window through which the evil spirits escaped, it certainly looks like early surgeons opened skulls and removed brain tumors. I’ve heard that there are even fairly detailed accounts describing operations for the removal of problematic growths well into B.C. For some time the way we’ve dealt with cancers amounted to a simple two-pronged attack. Try to hack away at an unwanted, growing mass of tissue faster than it grows back while avoiding any tissue we can identify as necessary; and numb the increasing pain with the strongest herbs and medicines we can find. Enter the laudanum “cocktail”, the broad spectrum of  opium (the seed resin) derived alkaloids dissolved in alcohol. You can’t get much more “herbal medicine” than that.

Now, the nature of cancer is odd to be sure and I’m going to over-simplify with out a doubt. it’s a growth of tissue that simply doesn’t belong where it is. It doesn’t belong in your body; it isn’t part of you or yours. The genetics are wrong. It used to be yours but the cells that make up that tissue are no longer the kind of cell they started as and they no longer perform the function they were intended to perform. At best they are just getting in the way and doing so at a growth rate that is causing problems for the cells they are displacing. At worst they are actually actively (and if you could attribute purpose, you might even say intentionally) doing harm attacking other cells. And this is just for a beginning.  As if they are a rebellious rabble, they can seem to convince other peaceful hardworking tissues of completely different organs to join their cause. It’s not too difficult to accept the idea of a lung cancer spreading to “infect” other lung cells; but it spreads to other organs. And it’s not the same as a virus or bacteria which isn’t really changing but just growing into more cells. Cancer cells used to be each of those different types of tissue cells. I guess this is why cancers are such a medical challenge.

Now enter modern chemo and radiation treatments. While there’s still a great deal of hacking involved (but thankfully more understanding of what’s being hacked and increasing skill at doing so) in removing some cancers, they’ve added new treatments to the process. Both chemo and radiation therapy apply a similar theory to the intervention. Rather than treat “it” as a lump and try to remove it, not being sure you’ve got it all (meaning “them” all since we’re talking about cells) and compensating by removing “extra”. Kill them where they are. Kill them cell by cell.

But we’ve yet to be able to be that selective. Advances in chemo formulations are getting better but have limits when it comes to differentiating between non-cancerous and cancerous cells. Radiation treatments are improving, with things like precise placements of radioactive material or accurate aiming of narrower beams so that the treatment is restricted to smaller cancerous tissue areas. There’s a way to go yet though, before treatments can target only the “broken” cells. So the process still seems a bit backward.

More than the cancerous cells are eliminated; cut out, killed in place, whatever. Then additional treatment compensates for the direct reaction to that such as pain, nausea or anemia. And additional treatment improves the patients over-all condition to recover from the effects of the loss of the collateral damage such as the growth of new good cells. Add to this the fact that there are often other problems indirectly the result of the cancer growth, like what happens to an organ pinched or displaced by a tumor and this all gets VERY COMPLICATED.