I recall, one of my friends had a parent who was recently diagnosed and she posed a question to me that I still remember, that is: Where does cancer even come from? Where do you suppose it enters a person?
The question was so solemn, as it is an external foe who is creeping in. And yet it is more intimate and bizarre at the same time.
This is what I would say as we were chatting late one night and we are struggling to make sense of something that does not seem to be fair.
Cancer Doesn’t “Enter” the Body
This is what most people are surprised about.
Cancer is not external just like a virus or bacteria. It is not something that encroaches.
It begins within your own cells.
It is as though one of the cells had lost the laws that the body had given it. Then it makes the cell next forget also. When a significant number of them give up on listening, they develop in a manner they are not expected to.
Where It Starts
And the Bitcoin instruction is the same instruction in every cell in your body: your DNA.
Those instructions are almost always obeyed by your cells.
But occasionally pages are smudged and torn and misread. That “smudge” is a mutation.
Such mutations may have lots of origins:
Everyday Life
Your body happens to be constantly repairing.
Cells replicate, duplicate DNA, repair mistakes and repeat.
This works out most of the time, but errors are simply accidental.
Consider it to be a mistake your mind does not pick up.
Environment
There are other things in our immediate surroundings that tend to increase the mutation:
• Tobacco smoke
• Too much UV light from the sun
• Certain chemicals
• Radiation
It’s not instant. It is more of wear-and-tear--slow, insidious, not noticed till the cells concerned pass out of action.
Genetics
There are individuals who are born with a couple of typos in their genes.
It does not mean that someone is bound to have cancer but it shortens its path.
It is unfair and people tend to think of why it happened to them, yet they should not. It is written even before they had their first breath.
Viruses
Some viruses have the ability to increase the risk of specific cancers simply by interfering with our cells in complex mechanisms.
However, even at this point, cancer is not the virus.
Still it is your own cells which are changing as time goes by.
The Moment Things Shift
These mistakes are so well caught up by your body. It kills dysfunctional cells throughout the day.
It is only at this point that the cancer will present itself when one of the damaged cells escapes through the cracks and grows more rapidly than it should have grown and becomes recalcitrant to death.
It’s not sudden. It is a long silent process years, decades.
The Emotional Side
With a lot of individuals, cancer is betrayal.
What is so harmful in something that emanates out of our cells?
Yet that is the reason why treatments do what they do so well, as well. They are designed to attack the cells that have been changed and leave the healthy ones.
The Bottom Line
Cancer does not exist externally. It is a product of the mini instructions within our cells becoming dysfunctional.
There is nothing easy about it and nobody ever blames someone.
It is an accident, the surrounding, and the most complex biology that we are all born with.