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Apr. 4–11, 2005 Listen to the message
What is Cancer?
My son Daniel asked me to speak to his second grade class about my job.
How was I to explain cancer to a group of seven year olds?
I began by telling them that the body is made of cells like bricks make a house.
Throughout your lifetime, cells are injured and need repair. Bruises, scrapes, cuts, burns, infections, and tongues burned by pizza cheese are all ways that cells can be injured.
But some cell injuries are below the surface, caused by the sun, the food we eat, and the tobacco we smoke. That kind of damage can injure cells in a way that can lead to cancer.
Cancerous cells can then grow out of control and spread through the body the way weeds take over a garden.
Sometimes, with cancer, we can cut the weeds out, but other times there are too many weeds and we need to spray weed killer.
As an oncologist, we use chemotherapy as our weed killer to rid the body of cancerous cells.
Just how some cell injuries cause cancer is next week’s topic.
