Postby Val*pal » Sat Jan 03, 2015 12:07 pm
Nick, I think you misinterpreted the article. My husband's doctor told him a couple of times that his cancer acquisition was "bad luck". And, in my estimation, it was.
No one can say precisely what causes cancer (except for the inherited strains and the exposure to known carcinogens). Everything that I've read states that it's probably the unfortunate result of several things, but definitely involves the rogue mutations of our body cells. We'd all like to think that X was the cause, but it's highly unlikely that it is just one factor. My husband did not drink alcohol, never smoked, ate a reasonably healthy diet, and had no known family history of cancer, but he got it all the same. He may have had some environmental risk in that he worked for 34 years at a diesel engine manufacturing plant; however, he was a statistician in an office at the plant, supposedly removed from possible fumes, but he did sit under an air vent for most of those 34 years. Perhaps that was one trigger that unfortunately met up with some other random results. I'm sure I'll never know.
Danny struggled to make sense of why it happened to him for the first year or so, but he came to accept its randomness. He'd also experienced a random brain aneurysm when he was 23 which he managed to survive with only moderate physical impairment, so I think he knew that bad things happen for apparently no reason at an early age.
Perhaps in the future science will be able to map cancer's origins more precisely, but for now we just have to accept that it's most likely the result of several influences that sadly come together to form those terrible fast growing cells.
All I know is that cancer took my husband much too early, and I miss him more with each passing day. He was such a kind person.
DH dx'ed May '11, age 62
Jul '11: resection Stage IV
10/11: 6 mo Folfox
8/12:thyr canc, surg/tx
2/13: peri mets
2/13: Firi/Avas
6/13: Ok
8/13: break
10/13: Lung, peri, mets
10/13: Firi/Erb
1/14: Erb Fail; spread
5/14: Tx stopped
6/20/14: At rest