Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Breast Cancer

You may have heard about special events, like walks or races, to raise money for breast cancer research. Or maybe you've seen people wear those little pink ribbons on their clothes.

Breast (say: brest) cancer is a common cancer among women. It occurs rarely in men and it doesn't affect kids. But kids might want to learn about it because they know someone who has it or because they want to learn how to check for it when they are older.

What Is Breast Cancer?

The human body is made of tiny building blocks called cells. Your body creates them, replacing those that die with new ones. Usually, the body creates healthy, normal cells that do just what they're supposed to do. This includes cells in the breasts, the two rounded areas on the front of the chest.

But if a cell changes into an abnormal, sometimes harmful form, it can divide quickly over and over again without dying, making many, many copies of itself. When this happens, a tumor, abnormal body cells grouped together in the form of a mass or lump, can start to form and grow.

Breast cancer is a kind of tumor that develops in the cells of a person's breast. You may think that only women can get breast cancer, but because all people have breast tissue, men can get breast cancer as well — though this is very rare.

A tumor can form anywhere in the body. Someone has cancer when those abnormal cells will not stop growing, and then cause sickness in the body.

Someone with breast cancer may have cancer cells in just one part of the breast, which might be felt as a lump. The cancer can spread throughout one or both breasts. Sometimes breast cancer spreads to other parts of the body, like the bones, the liver, or elsewhere.

Why Do People Get Breast Cancer?

Any woman can get breast cancer, but doctors have found that certain factors make some women more likely to get it.

  • Family history: A woman whose mother, sister, aunt, or daughter has had breast cancer is more likely to get breast cancer.

  • Age: As women get older, they are more at risk for breast cancer. Teens — as well as women in their twenties and thirties — are less likely to get breast cancer.

  • Diet and lifestyle choices: Women who smoke, eat high-fat diets, drink alcohol, and don't get enough exercise may be more at risk for developing breast cancer.

What Are the Signs of Breast Cancer?

A woman who has breast cancer may have no problems, or she may find a painless lump in her breast. If women examine their breasts monthly, they can help find lumps or other changes that a doctor should examine.

Most breast lumps are not cancer, but all lumps should be checked out by a doctor to be sure. Breast lumps that are not cancer may be scar tissue or cysts (fluid-filled lumps or sacs) or they can be due to normal breast changes associated with hormone changes or aging.

Girls who are beginning puberty might notice a lump underneath the nipple when their breasts start developing. Usually, this is a normal. You can ask a parent or your doctor about it to be sure.


What Will the Doctor Do?

Sometimes a doctor will discover a lump in a woman's breast during a routine examination or a patient might come to the doctor with questions about a lump she found.

In other cases, a mammogram (say: ma-muh-gram) may find a lump in the breast that can't be felt. A mammogram is a special kind of X-ray of the breast that helps doctors see what's going on inside. Sometimes, other kinds of pictures, like an MRI, also can be taken.

When a lump is found, the doctor will want to test it. The best way to do this is usually with a biopsy. In a biopsy, a small amount of breast tissue is removed with a needle or during a small operation. Then, the tissue is examined under a microscope to look for cancer cells.

The biopsy may be benign (say: bih-nine), which means the lump is not cancer. If the biopsy shows cancer cells, the lump is malignant (say: muh-lig-nunt). If a breast lump does contains cancer cells, the woman, along with her doctor and family, will decide what to do next.


Breast Cancer Treatment

Treatment for breast cancer usually depends on the type of cancer and whether the cancer has spread outside of the breast to the rest of the body.

Here are some common treatments:

  • lumpectomy (say: lum-pek-tuh-mee), which removes the cancerous tumor from the breast. A woman usually has this surgery when the cancer is found early and when the lump is small and in only one part of the breast.


  • mastectomy (say: ma-stek-tuh-mee), which removes the whole breast. This surgery is done when cancer cells have spread through the breast or into other parts of the body. It is a good way to remove all or most of the cancer, and it can help prevent the cancer from spreading or coming back. Sometimes, a woman who has a mastectomy may choose to have an operation to reconstruct (rebuild) the breast, so her shape will be more like it was before.

  • radiation therapy and chemotherapy, which are often used after lumpectomy or mastectomy to make sure that all the cancer cells are destroyed and do not grow back. Radiation (say: ray-dee-ay-shun) therapy uses high-energy X-rays to kill the cancerous cells. Chemotherapy (say: kee-mo-ther-uh-pee), or chemo, is special medicine that travels throughout the entire body and kills cancer cells.


Living With Breast Cancer

Dealing with breast cancer can be very hard for a woman and her family. A woman who has breast cancer surgery or treatment may not feel well for a while. She may be depressed if she had her breast removed. If a woman needs chemotherapy, she may lose her hair and she may feel sick to her stomach. She also may worry that the cancer will return and she'll get sick again.

The good news is that many times, especially if a lump is caught early, women with breast cancer go on to live full, healthy lives after treatment. Some join support groups so they can talk to other women with breast cancer who are feeling the same emotions.

There are even groups that kids or other family members can join to talk about their feelings when someone they love has breast cancer. Find a trusted adult to talk with if you're worried about a loved one.


Breast Cancer Prevention

Doctors and scientists are working to find cures for breast cancer. They are researching new medicines that may even help prevent the disease. But in the meantime, it's important for women to catch the disease early.

Regular mammograms — together with monthly breast self-exams — are the best ways for women to protect themselves. You may want to ask the women you care about if they are taking these important steps to stay healthy.

What Is Cancer

Cancer is a scary word. Almost everyone knows someone who got very sick or died from cancer. Most of the time, cancer affects older people. Not many kids get cancer, but when they do, very often it can be treated and cured.

What Is Cancer?

Cancer is actually a group of many related diseases that all have to do with cells. Cells are the very small units that make up all living things, including the human body. There are billions of cells in each person's body.

Cancer happens when cells that are not normal grow and spread very fast. Normal body cells grow and divide and know to stop growing. Over time, they also die. Unlike these normal cells, cancer cells just continue to grow and divide out of control and don't die when they're supposed to.

Cancer cells usually group or clump together to form tumors (say: TOO-mers). A growing tumor becomes a lump of cancer cells that can destroy the normal cells around the tumor and damage the body's healthy tissues. This can make someone very sick.

Sometimes cancer cells break away from the original tumor and travel to other areas of the body, where they keep growing and can go on to form new tumors. This is how cancer spreads. The spread of a tumor to a new place in the body is called metastasis (say: meh-TASS-tuh-sis).

Causes of Cancer

You probably know a kid who had chickenpox — maybe even you. But you probably don't know any kids who've had cancer. If you packed a large football stadium with kids, probably only one child in that stadium would have cancer.

Doctors aren't sure why some people get cancer and others don't. They do know that cancer is not contagious. You can't catch it from someone else who has it — cancer isn't caused by germs, like colds or the flu are. So don't be afraid of other kids — or anyone else — with cancer. You can talk to, play with, and hug someone with cancer.

Kids can't get cancer from anything they do either. Some kids think that a bump on the head causes brain cancer or that bad people get cancer. This isn't true! Kids don't do anything wrong to get cancer. But some unhealthy habits, especially cigarette smoking or drinking too much alcohol every day, can make you a lot more likely to get cancer when you become an adult.

Finding Out About Cancer

It can take a while for a doctor to figure out a kid has cancer. That's because the symptoms cancer can cause — weight loss, fevers, swollen glands, or feeling overly tired or sick for a while — usually are not caused by cancer. When a kid has these problems, it's often caused by something less serious, like an infection. With medical testing, the doctor can figure out what's causing the trouble.

If the doctor suspects cancer, he or she can do tests to figure out if that's the problem. A doctor might order X-rays and blood tests and recommend the person go to see an oncologist (say: on-KAH-luh-jist). An oncologist is a doctor who takes care of and treats cancer patients. The oncologist will likely run other tests to find out if someone really has cancer. If so, tests can determine what kind of cancer it is and if it has spread to other parts of the body. Based on the results, the doctor will decide the best way to treat it.

One test that an oncologist (or a surgeon) may perform is a biopsy (say: BY-op-see). During a biopsy, a piece of tissue is removed from a tumor or a place in the body where cancer is suspected, like the bone marrow. Don't worry — someone getting this test will get special medicine to keep him or her comfortable during the biopsy. The sample that's collected will be examined under a microscope for cancer cells.

The sooner cancer is found and treatment begins, the better someone's chances are for a full recovery and cure.


Treating Cancer Carefully

Cancer is treated with surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation — or sometimes a combination of these treatments. The choice of treatment depends on:
  • the type of cancer someone has (the kind of abnormal cells causing the cancer)

  • the stage of the tumor (meaning how much the cancer has spread within the body, if at all)

Surgery is the oldest form of treatment for cancer — 3 out of every 5 people with cancer will have an operation to remove it. During surgery, the doctor tries to take out as many cancer cells as possible. Some healthy cells or tissue may also be removed to make sure that all the cancer is gone.

Chemotherapy (say: kee-mo-THER-uh-pee) is the use of anti-cancer medicines (drugs) to treat cancer. These medicines are sometimes taken as a pill, but usually are given through a special intravenous (say: in-truh-VEE-nus) line, also called an IV. An IV is a tiny plastic catheter (straw-like tube) that is put into a vein through someone's skin, usually on the arm. The catheter is attached to a bag that holds the medicine. The medicine flows from the bag into a vein, which puts the medicine into the blood, where it can travel throughout the body and attack cancer cells.

Chemotherapy is usually given over a number of weeks to months. Often, a permanent catheter is placed under the skin into a larger blood vessel of the upper chest. This way, a person can easily get several courses of chemotherapy and other medicines through this catheter without having a new IV needle put in. The catheter remains under the skin until all the cancer treatment is completed.

Radiation (say: ray-dee-AY-shun) therapy uses high-energy waves, such as X-rays (invisible waves that can pass through most parts of the body), to damage and destroy cancer cells. It can cause tumors to shrink and even go away completely. Radiation therapy is one of the most common treatments for cancer. Many people with cancer find it goes away after receiving radiation treatments.

With both chemotherapy and radiation, kids may experience side effects. A side effect is an extra problem that's caused by the treatment. Radiation and anti-cancer drugs are very good at destroying cancer cells but, unfortunately, they also destroy healthy cells. This can cause problems such as loss of appetite, tiredness, vomiting, or hair loss. With radiation, a person might have red or irritated skin in the area that's being treated. But all these problems go away and hair grows back after the treatment is over. During the treatment, certain medicines can help a kid feel better.

While treatment is still going on, a kid might not be able to attend school or be around crowds of people — the kid needs to rest and avoid getting infections, such as the flu, when he or she already isn't feeling well. The body may have more trouble fighting off infections because of the cancer or side effects of the treatment.

Getting Better

Remission (say: ree-MIH-shun) is a great word for anyone who has cancer. It means all signs of cancer are gone from the body. After surgery or treatment with radiation or chemotherapy, a doctor will then do tests to see if the cancer is still there. If there are no signs of cancer, then the kid is in remission.

Remission is the goal when any kid with cancer goes to the hospital for treatment. Sometimes, this means additional chemotherapy or radiation might be needed for a while to keep cancer cells from coming back.