What is Leukemia?

Leukemia is a form of cancer, cancer of the blood forming systems and immune systems to be precise. Cancer of these systems can be especially dangerous because blood cells it affects run all throughout your body. Cancer in general is bad. Leukemia can be really bad.  So, you may ask, why research and focus on something so terrible? The answer is simple - because it is interesting and worth learning about. What if you were diagnosed with leukemia? Would you know what it is exactly, what type you have, or maybe what kind of treatment you are looking at? These are the reasons behind looking at cancer as a topic of study.

Some people believe that they know all there is to know about leukemia. The general public perception of leukemia is that it is a cancer of the spine and/or the bone marrow, and as we all know, whenever doctors need bone marrow, they tap the spine so obviously it’s there. You aren’t wrong with any of that. Leukemia does affect the bone marrow, and yes, you can get bone marrow from your spine, specifically, from the vertebrae.  You can’t pull bone marrow from the nerves that actually make up your spine. However, that’s not the whole story. There are two main types of leukemia that are categorized by what they affect. One type is myeloid, which damages your myeloid cells, the blood forming cells that are found in your bone marrow. There is a second kind, but this one affects your lymph system, which is important in aiding your immune system.

So, there are two types of leukemias.  That’s one more than most people recognize, but if you think you are done with the splitting of terms, you are sorely mistaken. These two types can be broken down further into two more categories, acute and chronic. The differences here are pretty substantial and are based on how fast the cancer does its work. Acute works like it has a hot date and does its work in the time span of months or even weeks.  If you find out you have an acute form of leukemia, you need to start treatment immediately. The chronic form, on the other hand, gives you time to consider your options.

All of this information is only scratching the surface of the iceberg, however.  There is so much to learn about leukemia, so for the purpose of my study, I will focus on one type of leukemia, Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). AML can develop from the use of chemotherapy. That’s right.  If you had a different type of cancer that you treated and beat with chemotherapy, then there is the chance that your bone marrow could become cancerous. “But wait,” you might say, “what if I had radiation and not chemo?” Well, in that case, you may be absolutely fine.  It is currently being debated by oncologists whether or not radiation treatment actually has any influence in the development of AML.  Common indications that a person has AML are as follows: they are anemic (too few healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen), are easily stricken ill, look pale and sickly because of anemia.  An accurate diagnosis needs to be completed by a medical professional.

While my research has led me to realize how much more there is to know, I have found the subject intriguing and am anxious to learn more.

~Nick