Youth and Cancer

When I first read the statistics on cancer in Mizoram, I was a little skeptical. I thought they must be a little skewed. To have the highest number of oral cancer in the world is a dubious honor.

But after working in Aizawl for barely a year, I can see first-hand that we do indeed have tremendous number of cancer cases. Cancer is usually a disease of the old, and not to seem crude, it is less shocking to hear that an elderly person has cancer than a healthy-seeming youth. But the young are not spared this deadly disease.

Cancer of the cervix is usually seen in women above 45 years. But you can hear of 24 year olds dying of this disease. Younger women seem to be more prone to this cancer than the old women here. Promiscuity(with HPV infection), poor personal hygiene and pure bad luck are probably the cause.

Breast cancer is another scary disease. We have seen many cases of unmarried women in their early thirties who had to have their breasts removed due to cancer. I cannot even guess how traumatic it is for a girl to have cancer, and have to remove one breast.

I have a rather gruesome picture of a 27 year old girl with cancer of the rectum. The surgeons had to remove her uterus, cervix and ovaries too, because the tumour was invading into her vagina.

Likewise, we have cases of 20 year old male with Nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a 30 year old male with stomach cancer, a 28 year old with bladder cancer. And so on. The cancers I mentioned are all commoner in the old, unlike Blood cancer (Acute Leukemias), some lymphomas, and some Germ cell tumours of the ovaries/testes, which are more common in the young.

So what can we do? Tobacco seems to be the favourite scapegoat. But there are many who totally abstain, and yet get diagnosed with cancer. So even when you are symptom-free, it's a good idea to have routine check-ups. Do self-breast examination, get your papsmear done, if your female. And for everyone, do an endoscopy if you have chronic gastritis, especially if you're above 40 years.