Cancer is a collection of over 200 diseases affecting different organs and systems and respond to treatments differently.

We have fairly effective cures for some of them, others we do not and only have treatments.

One of the key problems with cancer is that a tumor can send out cancer cells that nest in the rest of your body, sometimes lying dormant for a long time, once this happens as long as you have these little clusters of cells around your body you have cancer that can, and probably will, come back - often worse than before.

For many cancers - as long as you catch it before this happens the prognosis is fairly good, the trouble is that a lot of cancers have few, if any, symptoms before you get to that stage so go undetected until you’re in a world of shit.

With the disease itself - the cancer cells are your own cells, just turbocharged and with the “off” switch broken, so they grow in an uncontrolled and unhealthy way. Because they are your own cells any drug that kills them is normally highly toxic to the rest of you, making drug based treatments difficult. There are immune-system based treatments, but these are tough because the cells are your own cells so it’s tricky yo get your immune system to attack them without attacking the rest of you.