One of the top causes of death in the United States is cancer. It accounts for nearly one-third (29%) of all deaths, 2.5 million in 2005.
This year alone, more than 1.4 million Americans will learn that they have cancer; there are more new cases each year than breast, prostate, lung, and colon cancers combined! Early diagnosis is key to surviving cancer successfully. A cancer delay of just one month can mean four additional deaths per 100 women diagnosed with breast cancer; a month delay in diagnosis of prostate cancer results in three other fatalities.
The good news: There are steps you can take starting today that will help ensure
The earlier you recognize that you have cancer, the faster you can start treating it. Fortunately, some warning signs usually indicate the presence of cancer. These early symptoms also begin showing up long before you can feel anything unusual in your body.
If you see a mole that has changed shape, color, size, or if it’s irritating and keeps coming back after being scratched off, then this is your first clue to get checked out by your doctor.
Another early symptom of cancer is blood in urine or stool. Sometimes people have an upset stomach, so they tend to ignore that everything they eat goes right through them. As a result, they don’t think about going to the doctor until one day when all of a sudden, it starts hurting bad whenever they pee. Finally, when the pain becomes too much for them to take, they end up going to see their doctor, where he tells them that there was blood in their urine and that things don’t look good at all.
Another symptom of cancer is skin ulcers. Anyone who has ever had skin ulcers knows how painful they can be, but not everyone realizes that it’s a warning sign for cancer until the doctor tells them so. Unfortunately, there may have already been some internal damage done to other parts of their body by this time.
Some people also experience very intense pains in their bones and joints, which can result from cancer. Sometimes bone pain is the first thing that you notice about your illness early on, not realizing that it’s something more severe than just arthritis or some other type of common ailment. It might take years for you to finally get diagnosed with cancer simply because you were ignoring the signs all along, thinking that they weren’t anything important. By this time, however, it could have already spread throughout your entire body, killing you slowly from the inside.
Understanding what cancer looks like at its earliest stages can save lives because patients will know exactly what they are dealing with right away instead of being blindsided by ignorance. The earlier you catch cancer, the more lives you stand to save. This is why people need to realize what they see in their bodies and seek help if they notice anything that doesn’t look right or seems out of place.