Why Does Cancer Come Back?

This puzzled and angered me. I had the treatments my doctors recommended, surgery and chemotherapy, which I really didn't want, and still my cancer came back in the skin where my breast used to be. Then I had treatment again, and it came back again, this time in other parts of my body.

But I'd had negative lymph nodes at the time of the first cancer, so how could the cancer now be in my bones?

The simplest, non-scientific, answer is that cancer is a sneaky, unpredictable disease.

The medical answer: All the cells in a tumor are not alike, so they won't necessarily all respond to treatment in the same way. In other words, the chemo may not kill all the cancer cells. Doctors know this, but usually don’t explain it to patients before chemo.

When I asked my medical oncologist why my cancer had metasized despite two series of aggressive treatments, he explained it this way:

"The cancer recurred because there were a few cells which were resistant to the treatments we had previously applied. They survived and eventually grew from microscopic to a size where symptoms appeared. They had clearly already spread by way of the bloodstream, since your recurrence this time was in the bones and lung."

What can I add? I’m a person who likes to understand what’s going on, so I asked for this information.

What do I do with it? Accept it, as I’ve had to accept so many unpleasant facts during this dance with cancer.

@ Jeanne Sather 2006

Comments

[Mary]

No one yet knows why cancer, once in remission, returns. One possible answer is that the immune system is unable to completely eradicate any few cancer cells that linger after seemingly successful treatment at a cancer clinic (see article on this topic of "immune system" at www.aacancer.com in the "articles" section) because the immune system cannot recognize the cancer cells, or the immune system is so weakened by the cancer clinic treatment that it cannot function properly.