Never Neglect Subtle Symptoms of Leukemia

Leukemia is one of the dreaded forms of cancer that develop in blood forming cells or tissues like bone marrow and lymphatic system.

This form of cancer is characterized by unreasonable inordinate production of abnormal white blood cells in large numbers. These abnormal cells do not function properly like other normal blood cells and start getting overcrowded in the bone marrow; they eventually start spilling in to the peripheral blood and severely impair the ability to fight infections. Though leukemia starts from blood cells but it can rapidly spread and can affect other parts of body like liver, spleen, lymph nodes and even central nervous system.

For variety of reasons leukemia is very difficult condition for diagnosis. In the beginning stages bone marrow produce only a limited number of abnormal blood cells so body is not generally noticeably affected in these initial stages. In cases of chronic leukemia most of the common symptoms are subtle and can go unnoticed for several years. But gradually symptoms start getting worse and abnormal white blood cells collect in large numbers in various parts of body like kidneys, testicles and in digestive tract; this severely damages internal blood cells ability of fighting various infections.

Symptoms of leukemia are mostly non-exclusive and there could be wide variety of causes for such symptoms. Symptoms like fever, nausea, headache, joint pains, loss of appetite and insomnia are often attributed to cold or flu. People generally try to avoid extensive, painful and expensive medical tests of leukemia and try to overlook these recurrent mild symptoms. As a result leukemia goes undiagnosed for several years.

Doctors need to conduct variety of tests on bone marrow and blood cells to rule out other conditions before confirming leukemia. Simply over production of white blood cells cannot be attributed to leukemia. There could be several other conditions which can be responsible for elevated white blood cell count. Doctors perform biopsy on a small piece of bone marrow to identify and harmful activity in the tissue.

Biopsy tests of bone marrow are painful and expensive due to which patients generally deter or delay these tests. But they need to understand that they may actually nurturing cancerous cells in their body to grow by delaying these tests. Doctors can start leukemia treatment only after its confirmation. So it is in the best interest of patients to proceed for tests if they are suffering from any of subtle but recurrent symptoms of leukemia.