Understanding cancer recurrence
Battling cancer victoriously lets one breathe a little easier. But, that does not take away the all-consuming fear a cancer survivor harbors inside of themselves. Fear and anxiety does hinder daily life, and the only option one has is to be calm and positive. Yet, one gets jittery with every follow-up with the doctor.
The fear is not baseless though. Cancer in all its entirety can sometimes relapse. The returning of cancer after having gone through the initial treatments to get rid of the cancer is recurrence. It can be because the treatment failed to completely remove some malignant cells from the body that eventually started multiplying aggressively again. These cancerous cells may or may not originate in the same place as the first time.
Types
In most recurrence cases, cancer that returns after the remission period is the same one that the patient had suffered from earlier. In some cases, however, it can be a different type of cancer and might not be related to the first one. The types of cancer recurrence are:
- Local
It is when cancer has returned where it had first occurred or somewhere close. Local recurrence of cancer signifies that cancer has not spread elsewhere.