There have been a number of posts on here regarding this subject over the years, which to be honest I’ve not paid too much attention to. Just recently my Mrs was diagnosed with breast cancer, thankfully caught early and now coming out the other side of the treatment cycle.

With this in mind, obviously the antenna are more tuned to the subject than might have been the case previously. So I had a bit of a revelation the other day, whilst chatting to a neighbour. Basically, we live in a cul de sac of nine houses. Out of those we have the following situation.

No.2 Lost their youngest son aged 6 to cancer
No.3 Husband died last year through cancer
No.5 Wife died last year through cancer
No.7 Wife currently terminally ill with cancer
No. 8 Is where my wife is in recovery.

So 5 out of 9 have been immediately affected by it.

Then, on top of that my wife was telling me about the folk she works with. Out of 6 people, 3 have had breast cancer, one’s husband is currently terminally ill, and anothers son has just been diagnosed.

Surely to Christ this can’t be how it is everywhere…… can it? 😯

Radon gas?

The probability of that happening depends on the age of your neighbours I guess. A huge chunk of us will eventually succumb to cancer, just not before we’re 50.

From 6 through to 75 stopping at most decades inbetween. Overall the higher proportion is under 50, not that that means anything.

Cancer killed my Grandad, my Dad, my Aunt, my Uncle and my dog. My mum and MIL are currently fighting it.

So yes, it could be like that everywhere

First off, I wish you and your wife all the best. The ‘treatment cycle’ is tough and I have maximum respect for anyone who comes through this journey.
To attempt to answer your question, I feel it is everywhere. When I was younger, you heard of people getting it but never really dwelled on the issue. Once my mum got diagnosed many years ago, suddenly it seems to be everywhere. I think it always has been but you only instigate conversations about it when it directly effects you, then we tend to become more exposed to other peoples experiences a bit more. Thats what I found anyway.

Again, all the best.

JW

More than 1 in 3 people will be effected by cancer, so it’s likely everyone will know someone who has had it.

I know 4 people that died from brain tumours all in space of 4 days a fortnight ago 😯

See what I mean? Thats incredible, ane the more you talk to people the more unbelievably widespread it is.

Well it could (this is incredibly unscientific) as if there were more people under 50 suffering cancer in your locality then it would raise my eyebrows in respect to an environmental cause.

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/incidence/age/

Although you’d need to do a proper epidemiological survey on the locality to make any conclusions.

in respect to an environmental cause.

Personally, I suspect the environment does have a lot to do with it bwaarp, but I don’t think what I’m experiencing is unusual. Thats the point. I’m not naieve, and I was/am well aware of the issues, but have to admit that I had no idea that it was this prevalent. As you can see above, I am not at all unique in this experience.

Mother in law – survived breast cancer

Mum – didn’t survive lung cancer

Auntie – riddled with it and died just before Christmas

Yes, it is everywhere but (to an extent) it is going to be the case with an ageing population. Historically we were all dead long before cancer could get most of us.

My thoroughly non-researched guess is that cancer rates are seemingly going up compared to what you were used to when you were younger because:

1) Diagnosis is getting better, people used to die and the only time medics found out they had cancer was post-mortem.

2) Life style choices are actually increasing cancer rates (I think, don’t quote me on this).

3) Social networking has made the world smaller so you are in contact with more people who get it.

I’d suspect other environmental causes if your locality had cancer rates significantly above national averages – wonder if anyone has ever plotted incidences of cancer vs levels various environmental pollutants in your area on a map.

Cancer is almost as inevitable as the tax man tbh. Can’t decide what I’d want more, Alzheimer or the former – it’s pretty much a choice between those two – a nice quick heart attack just before I lost it mentally at the age of 80 would be perfect.

It is very sobering. I have friends and relatives who have had it and survived, had it and died, and had it and now have a terminal prognosis. I can count easily people of every age from young children through teenagers, adults, and seniors. Risk factors aside, it does not distinguish and is a horrible experience for all impacted by it.

That’s why i no longer give randomly to charity; all my donations are bundled up each year and given to Cancer Research because I think there is a cure for it on the horizon. I feel bad when I see the other charities rattling their tins and walk by, but it’s the choice I made.

I meet up with a group of friends (15 or so) each year, that I was at University with 25 years ago. Every year, we are amazed that none of us has suffered from it. Every year the chance increases I guess, and every year the thought crosses my mind that maybe one of us already is but doesn’t know it yet.

Thoughts to all struggling against Cancer right now.

It seems high, and it’s tempting to look for an immediate environmental cause when you see a ‘cluster’ of cancers so close together, but given that cancer is actually quite a high incidence disease – 1 in 3 of us will develop it at some point in our lives – it is inevitable that you’ll get some roads with higher than average numbers of cancer patients or former patients, and some with lower.

The other issue is whether you can gather together lots of different types of cancer under one classification – simple answer is you can’t, cancer is a multitude of illnesses with many similarities but also a wide variety of different possible causes and risk factors.

Understandably, a cancer diagnosis is a massive event, and culturally we tend to flag it up more compared with other life-threatening illnesses. So the next road along might have fewer cancers, but more severe respiratory diseases.

My best wishes to your wife, obviously. It’s good to hear she is in remission.

a ‘cluster’ of cancers so close together

Actually, I don’t think it is a cluster. Reason being, there are two elements, the road we live in, and secondly the place she works at. There is no geographical relationship between them. The office is 8 miles away and the majority of people who work there actually come from a completely different town, which is even further away.

Its also clear from some of the posts above that this experience is far from unusual, and quite honestly talking to people generally if anything it seems to be more the norm. As far as Cancer being many different diseases is concerned, that may well be the case, but the reality is that the difference is generally the location within the body as opposed to the actual nature of the disease, which inevitably involves uncontrolled cellular mutation wherever it is.

It’s horrible, hate it hate it hate it. My grandfather died from it aged 52 and my father died from it when he was 54, I’m 38 so I’ve maybe got about 16/17 years of life left if it happens to me. My mothers grief when my father passed was enormous and it took her years to come to terms with it, I moved back in with her when it happened to support her and she would basically spend all day crying and wailing. Sometimes I get maudlin thinking about my wife and children living without me and toasting me at their weddings (as we did for my father) and such like, makes very sad, I don’t want to die, I really enjoy living.

I tend to think that the greater presence of cancer these days is just that we’re getting better at treating all the curable diseases that used to end our lives prematurely, so now we live long enough to succumb to the inevitable…

Cancer is a horrible, horrible way to die, I really would not wish it on anyone.

My mum died of cancer last October and the end was truly awful.

My loved ones going through that scares the shit out of me.

My thoroughly non-researched guess is that cancer rates are seemingly going up compared to what you were used to when you were younger because:

…also people die less of other things.

Throw into the mix that the present and previous generation have been exposed to a massive amount of pesticides, artificial chemicals and radiation both in the home and in their/our food.

Cancer has always been with us but we basically gave it steroids and free reign after the industrial revolution.

It does amaze me how common it is. I lost my mum to it when she was 33, my gran was only 50 odd and an uncle I was very close to was 30 when he died from it. I have also lost a number of less close relatives to it. A girl I used to work with who is in her early twenties has just been diagnosedwaiting for the breast cancer.

The saddest thing for me was waiting for the inevitable once it has been confirmed as terminal. In my mum’s case it was a slow decline, watching a once strong and active lady decline.

OP, glad to hear that it was caught earlyfor your other half. All the best.

My wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer 3 years ago, caught early chemo/operation she has been all clear for 21/2 years. 🙂

What really shocked me was my first trip to the oncology department at Addenbrooks Hospital Cambridge, lots of doctors/treatment rooms; the waiting area was massive and it was full all the time.

Up until that point I had no idea how many people cancer affected.

My wife works a radiotherapist in a cancer centre and for many forms of cancer if caught early, then there are good survival rates, but i think we all have to ask ourselves how often we check for the signs when it comes to prostate, testicular, breast cancer etc, i bet less than 5% of people do it reguarly?

It still amazes me when I pick her up from work, and it must get the staff there down, when they try so hard to treat someone and they are stood outside the front door having a fag or point blank refusing to change their diet to enable them to have surgery or listen to any advice.

I’m the other way around, I don’t know of any immediate family or friends that has/has had cancer that I’m aware of (at least that was diagnosed), , plenty of friend’s of friends have suffered but not actually mine. Only one work colleague that I actually knew as well (although sadly in his case it was terminal)

Some days it seems like it’s everywhere, My Grandma had 4 children, she’s has lost 3 or them, including my Dad, to cancer – it really isn’t right to outlive your kids like that. However on my mum’s side of the family has hardly been effected by it.

One theory I had was that people from the time before we knew how bad smoking was are just getting to their 40’s and 50’s and dieing from that.

Another theory is that cancer is actually a very broad range of diseases grouped under one name so it comes up a lot.

Cancer is a horrible, horrible way to die, I really would not wish it on anyone.

My mum died of cancer last October and the end was truly awful.

My loved ones going through that scares the shit out of me.

Sorry to hear this.

I also lost my Mum to cancer in October last year (which is why your post leapt out at me). I hope you’re doing ok – utterly sh!t isn’t it?!

1 in 3 over the age of 65, apparently.

Very comforting for me at 61… 😯

are just getting to their 40’s and 50’s and dieing from that.

People coming into their 40s and 50s can’t use ignorance as an excuse. I am 46 this year and I have always known the risks to my health. So much so I used to mercilessly hound my mum when I was a kid, telling her she would kill herself if she kept smoking. And she did. She even carried on smoking after having an operation to (attempt to) remove the cancerous cells in her lungs.

Yeh I’m okay missnotax, thanks for asking. I’ve struggled more with seeing someone die than losing my mum.

Hope you’re alright too.

spent 12 years in cancer research and i still know nothing about it!

cancer isnt just one disease
there are hundreds of types of cancer

most of them at their root cause are a malfunction in the regulation of cell growth and division

there are anything from 10-100 trillion cells in the human body

so quite frankly im amazed that it happens so rarely

This is going to sound very insensitive but I have had a lot of time to think about it as my mother died from a grade 4 glioma last year; or a highly aggressive brain tumor for the layman.

Unfortunately the mortality rate is 100%. As most other diseases in the west have been removed from the equation then cancer is pretty much all that we are left with.

Go to India and fewer people die of cancer hurrah; they just die of something else at a much younger age generally.

That’s very true alex222. As one of the consultants said to me more people get cancer because they live longer – it’s as simple as that. If something else doesn’t get you then it’s likely cancer will before ‘natural causes’.

Can only echo others comments having watched my dad go from a strong & healthy car mechanic to a bag of bones when he succumbed to Oesophagus cancer September 2011 @ the age of 61. He fought till the end having undergone major surgery and chemo to remove his oesophagus only for the cancer to come back. Life truly is unfair sometimes but makes your realise how you must live for every moment and arguments etc. are a waste of time that can be used doing something more positive

Does make you think about your own mortality when a parent passes too young….

BoardinBob – Member
I know 4 people that died from brain tumours all in space of 4 days a fortnight ago

Without wanting to offend or upset anyone who is or has dealt with this in their lives – Bob isn’t it time you realised your never going to make it as a brain surgeon!

Without wanting to offend or upset anyone who is or has dealt with this in their lives – Bob isn’t it time you realised your never going to make it as a brain surgeon!

Kudos.

Funnily (or not) there is a belief among other doctors that this is actually how brain surgeons / oncologists operate. The line they take is ‘the operation was a complete success but the patient is dead’ apparently.

So Bob you’re doing fine so far.

Apparently you have a 1 in three chance of getting it. With four people per household, that would make quite likely that each house woul dhave something. Although it’s usually only two older and two younge rpeople so perhaps not.

My mum had cancer about 13 years ago. She’s in great health now, but it was honestly the most physically and mentally exhausting time of my life (I was the “man” in the family, so had to assume some responsiblities I wasn’t quite ready for), so I can’t even imagine how it was for my mum.

It still makes me cry to think of what she went through, not just the trauma of dealing with the direct impact of having cancer but also the constant worry of how she would provide for us, get our food on the table etc.

Cancer sucks, but we’ve never been so well prepared in terms of treatment – it is possible to beat it in many many cases, despite how unlikely that seems to a loved one and family at the time of diagnosis. Even though I played the part of the optimistic and pragmatic support, I really thought I was going to lose my mum, it’s the worst feeling in the world. My condolences to all those who fought the same battle but were not so fortunate 🙁

it is horrific and once you’re ‘touched’ by it you become much more aware of it.
one point i have to say though is that cancer is a name for a family of disease, all similar in their way, hence them being headed under the same title. as someone whos been there and come through the other side please don’t make the assumption that every cancer and every treatment will be the same. it won’t.
i did NOT google anything as unless it was a 17 stone bloke called Nick Hart in sheffield saying about a treatment or a side effect it may not be the same for me.
horrific, yes. hard, incredibly. emotionally draining and don’t forget that it’s all those things for patient and loved ones alike.

humans have released so much radioactive material into the atmosphere through nuclear testing and burning of fossil fuels since the 1950’s that we are unable to carbon date material since then. the huge increase in cancer now is very likely to be a result of this. we have nothing but our parents to blame 🙁

Not really – it’s not a lot of radioactive material, far less than is present naturally I’d wager.