Question: If you get cancer what will happen and how long is it till you die?

Ramya Bhatia answered on 22 Jun 2014:

Hi

Cancer means a change in the behavious of your cells in the body. Most normal cells grow and divide in the body and have a specific function. once their function is over, the cell is no longer needed and it dies. you get cancer when one (or a few cells) in the body keep growing continuously and refuse to stop and die. So what you get is an uncontrolled growth causing tumours. This is generally a first stage and depending on what part of the body this has happened in, they are called different types and cancers. If the tumour grows very big and blocks some other important function (for example if someone gets tumour in the throat and are unable to swallow as a result) that is when most cancers are detected. At this stage most of them would be treatable.

In some cases the rouge cells (that keep on growing) get into the blood and then they go attach to some other part of your body and start growing there. This way the tumour spreads to other parts of the body (a term called metastasis). This is more difficult to treat.

In answer to your question, what will happen is that the tumours in the body will block important functions. but there is no way of knowing how long people can live with cancers. It all depends on what stage the doctors identify it and how well a person can be treated. It varies very much depending on the type of cancers as well