Cancer is a serious issue. Not just today, it has been an issue for a long time, it is only with today's technology that we have been able to diagnose with any form of accuracy. Cancer is, of all things, a disease of our cells, the main component that we are made from becomes ill, it is this that is known as cancer. In the event of cancer, what happens is that our cells grow and multiply in an uncontrollable rate. This is why radiation is used on cancer patients as the radiation basically kills the cells while the rest of the process focuses on fixing the abnormality that caused the uncontrollable growth rate.

When you hear the term cancerous, you may also her the term malignant. Malignancy and cancer is one in the same, they are just two different words with the same exact meaning, much like many words in the English dictionary. Benign however, is not cancer at all. A person can have a fibrous growth on the neck cause by the sun and heat that is not cancerous, it is just a cyst, and it is also known as a benign growth.

Cancer on the other hand is an entirely different ballgame. I used the term abnormality before, now I am going to describe this abnormality. It is not a single disease, but rather a grouping of over 100 diseases working together, but each with its own distinctive purpose. Cancer can form in any tissue in the body, when you hear the term the cancer is spreading; it will still be called the same cancer even if it has spread to another tissue type. It is dependant on where the cancer started when giving it a name.

Skin cancer is considered by far to be the most common type of cancer, while a thyroidal cancer is considered to be the least. However, these numbers are not entirely accurate, thyroidal cancer is the least common but only over 30,000 cases per year. There are many less common types of cancer but due to the lower number of yearly cases it may not be recorded accurately.

On top of this, many cancers are also classified together in groups like colon and rectal types of cancer are grouped as colorectal cancers. Further, cancers like kidney cancer can actually start in two different places and though the type of cancer may be different such as parenchyma and pelvic, the cancer is still classified as a cancer of the kidneys.

Many people are also fully aware of the type of cancer known as leukemia. Leukemia is a cancer of your blood and bone marrow (the source of your body's blood production). In leukemia, your blood cells themselves become cancerous which then leads to all types of complications like the lack of an ability to clot blood due to bone marrow cells. It is this reason why many leukemia patients can easily bruise and if they get cut, it is harder to stop the flow.