Wednesday, April 28, 2010

What does untreated prostate cancer actually do to your body

What does untreated prostate cancer actually do to your body?
Like, not symptoms, but the actual effect/s it has on you. @ Delhi Surgeon...I'm a girl, and I do not have prostate cancer. I was just curious.
Cancer - 3 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
Well, eventually pretty much every cancer would follow phases something like this... Localized tumor (prostate in this case) Spreads to surrounding tissues Spreads to lymph nodes Lymph nodes carry microscopic cells thru the body Cells create new cancer sites elsewhere in the body Cancer eventually gets to vital organs and uses up so much energy itself that the patient becomes weak, frail and thin, eventually dies once a vital organ gives up. Prostate is USUALLY very slow growing and normally takes a long time for it to become very serious. It's one of the most treatable cancers and very common as well. ADD: Also if you notice the most terminal or critical cancers are those that start IN the vital organs...that means that the cancer is already in a major danger zone and makes it much more deadly. I just survived cervical cancer, which the cervix is not a vital organ, I was very lucky I think because had it been somewhere vital I don't know how much harder treatment would've been but it was hard enough!
2 :
Prostate cancer is a heterogenous cancer, I mean it can have variable course (in some less aggressive and in few very aggressive). If untreated it will spread locally (to bladder/ seminal vesicle etc.), By lymphatics to pelvic nodes, and by blood vessels to other distant sites (commonly to bones/ vertebra). Usually prostate cancer is very responsive to radiotherapy/ Hormone therapy and its suregry (radical prostatcetomy) is also a safe surgery. So overall prognosis for prostate cancer is good, but once it has gone to distant organs like bones or lungs it would become incurable. May I ask why you dont want it to be treated? I would advice you to undergo proper treatment and don't just let it spread thinking it as a grave cancer and become dishartened.
3 :
It can spread, usually to the brain I think. But it is very treatable even after it has spead.

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