How Does Colon Cancer Affect the Body?

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Dr. David Cathcart. I'm from Heartland Regional Medical Center, in St. Joseph, Missouri, and we're going to talk about colon cancer. Colon cancer, of course the colon is part of a tube that starts at our mouth. It becomes the esophagus, attaches to our stomach, and then starts the small intestine, and there's a number of feet of small intestine, then a, then the large intestine. The those are call, usually the large intestines we'll refer to as the colon, and colon cancer most typically will will occur in the large intestine somewhere. The large intestine attaches to the small intestine. It starts on the right side of our body, comes up, across, and then down, and it hooks to the rectum and and out, so that's how we expel, well out. So colon cancer then like other cancers forms when a group of cells that become misguided become programmed to do something they're not, start growing very rapidly, and they cause a mass. Now, the interesting thing about colon cancer is that these, because the colon has so many blood vessels in it as it, these blood vessels attempt to extract nutrients from the from the food that's progressing through the colon the the cancer cells disrupt those blood vessels and frequently will cause bleeding. As bleeding then comes out the rectum it may appear red if the bleeding is down close to the rectum, or if it's higher up where the blood gets digested it'll turn more black, and so the stool may look very dark and black which is oftentimes referred to as melena stools. So, colon cancer then grows in those areas. It can obstruct the colon or it can cause bleeding. Sometimes it may present as anemia. You may just feel tired or maybe you're noticing black, tarry looking stools, or you're noticing blood in your rectum. Any of those things are cause for a trip to the doctor's office to check to make sure you don't have colon cancer. This is Dr. David Cathcart."