Why I Have Breast Cancer on My Femur

Thomas Cole - The Course of Empire: Destruction

Common thing to wonder: Why do you have breast cancer on your femur?

Philosophical answer:  Beats the heck out of me.  One day I work up and there it was.

Explanatory answer:  A lot of people are wondering why cancer on my bones isn't called bone cancer.

I know it sounds a little weird to say I have breast cancer on my bones, but there's actually a good reason for it.  It goes like this this: cancer isn't an invader, at least not in the classical sense.  Cancer isn't something I "caught" from the outside the way you would a virus or germ.  My cancer is all me.  All natural.  Completely homegrown.

Cancer is my own cells, in this case cells from the milk ducts my (former) breast that went a little crazy.  One or two of my own cells changed a bit and overcame the things that would normally keep them in line and kept them growing in nice, tidy, duct-like ways.  Insteasd, they got out of control and kept growing willy-nilly, dividing and redividing and forming a couple of masses made up of cloned copies of their mutated selves.

The masses got big and broke through the ducts where they started, spilling into to the surrounding tissue.  They continued growing and even added access to my blood supply to continue feed the bulk of them as the mass grew larger and larger. At some point, some cells broke off and left the area in search of new places to colonize.  Some traveled through the lymphatic system, which is why I had cancer in and around the lymph nodes under my arm.  Some may have gone through the blood system, too, but there's no way to know for sure about that.

What we can tell is that in their quest for world domination, when these cells left the breast they formed new lesions on my bones, making a new home on particularly bones that have a rich blood supply and can feed them in a manner consistent with their needs.

Without intervention, they just keep growing and trying to spread out without realizing that in doing so they're jeopardising the very thing they need to survive.

Brief semi-religious deviation: I think of these cancerous cells like Adam and Eve in the garden.  They want to be like God but they only know the parts of God they themselves experience and have no idea of all the things outside of themselves that being God involves (of course, clearly, neither do I).  These cancerous cells seem hell bent on taking over, spreading out and pushing their way into the places of me that will best support their continued growth and quest for domination.  But  what they don't understand is, if they win, they really lose.  They can't be the God of me because taking over everything would kill me and without me there is no them.  Their view is limited to the inside of my body and they act like they think my body is all there is and could support them forever no matter what they do.

Stupid cancer.

Continued somewhat anthropomorphic but otherwise factual explanation: So now they've set up shop on a few of my bones.  But they aren't bone cells gone rogue (which would make them real bone cancer), they're still breast cells. Breast cells with mutations that have colonized on my bones, but breast cells nonetheless.

And the important thing is, they still act like mutated breast cells.  They have some characteristics that come from those ductal cell origins that, hopefully, can be be used against them to stop them or at least seriously slow them down.

But if we were to treat them like bone cells gone all crazy on me, that wouldn't work so well because bone cells don't act the same way as breast cells (which, actually, probably goes without saying) and bone cancer doesn't necessarily react to treatments the same way breast cancer does.  Even when the breast cancer is currently thriving in my bones.

And that's how I came to have breast cancer on my femur.