• Question: How quickly can cancer affect people ?

    Asked by to Matt, Leah, Andrea, Ana, Amar on 14 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Matthew Lam

      Matthew Lam answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      In a lot of cases, cancer probably starts really early on in someone’s life, but the disease may not present itself or you may not know that you have it until much later on.

    • Photo: Anastasia Wass

      Anastasia Wass answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      Matts right cancer often works really slowly. A good example is cervical cancer caused by HPV. Girls often get infected with HPV when they’re young, the virus starts to affect the cells straight away but cancer doesn’t usually develop for decades.

    • Photo: Amar Joshi

      Amar Joshi answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      Hi Ship, I’m not sure if your question is about the progession of cancer of at what age you can get cancer.

      Children can get cancer but it is more likely in older people.

      Cancer can progress quite rapidly, but that could be before or after diagnosis. Cancers usually start of well contained within tissues, it is when they escape and find new places to grow around the body that it becomes more serious.

      Another way cancer can affect people is psychologically. When some people find out that they have cancer they can get depressed. This would happen shortly after diagnosis. Often their family and friends can help them through the depression.

    • Photo: Leah Fitzsimmons

      Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      Tumours can grew at all different rates and that can affect how they are treated. The cancer I work on, Burkitt lymphoma, is one of the fastest growing types there is and the tumours can double in size within days. Luckily, it is very rare in this country and most people who get it respond well to treatment and are cured, but before good medicines were available this type of tumour could lead to someone dying only a few weeks after they were diagnosed.

    • Photo: Andrea Hanvey

      Andrea Hanvey answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      The others are right, i think it also depends on the type of cancer. some cancers are more aggressive than others and the tumours grow more quickly, endocrine tumours (those effected by hormones) tend to more aggressive and grow more quickly

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