What does cancer pain feel like? Is it achy or sharp or throbbing? Does it depend on the type of cancer?
I’m thinking more of the end stage type cancer - does that pain come from your organs being pushed around?
Morbid question, but I’m curious. Thanks.
Absolutely.
And while I’ve never experienced it myself, as an onlooker let me assure you some kinds make you feel extremely guilty that you didn’t smother them with a pillow when you had the chance. Better men than me have taken the chance.
My mom always said she would off herself if she got the cancer. When she did, she got afraid of going to hell - old Catholic guilt dies hard I guess. It was bad. 
Mine didn’t cause much pain. Mostly made it hard to swallow. The treatments were hell though.
My great-aunt died of cancer of the salivary gland. I visited her in hospice and she said it felt like someone was pressing his fist against her face all the time.
Four years ago I contracted a nasal carcinoma in the sinus and mucus glands - an event so rare that my GP completely missed the diagnosis and the E-N-T specialist that eventually treated it said it was only the third one he’d seen in a 40-year career. As it progressed, the pain became intense to the point that I was swallowing 6-8 Ibuprofin every few hours; unwise, I suppose, but it was all I had to work with. The GP wasn’t about to prescribe serious painkillers for what he was convinced was simply a stubborn sinus infection or maybe nasal polyps. It was not a sharp stabbing pain; rather a deep throbbing ache that spread across my face and into the eye sockets. Not unlike what you’d feel with a really bad sinus attack. The fist-in-the-face analogy mentioned above is apt. FWIW, the surgery, radiation, and subsequent cosmetic surgery to repair the facial damage was fully as unpleasant as the disease.
Fortunately, this one was very treatable, but I believe that if I should ever have terminal cancer, I would choose to end things quickly at a time of my own choosing rather than waiting to die by inches in intense pain.
SS
good friend & next door neighbor went to have swelling throat/ tongue problem checked out…heavy beer drinker and chain smoker.
Just got the diagnosis last week…cancer, confirmed with biopsy. Scope showed none in lungs, but now they want to do a CT lung scan Dec 29…starts chemo after that. Doc said 70% survival rate.
still refuses doc’s order to nix beer & cigarettes. wonder what that does to the 70%
Some of us prefer to lurch, (huffing &) puffing, into that good night.
I had breast cancer but it didn’t hurt. They got it all and I had radiation (a really interesting experience) and chemo and felt like a poseur because I wasn’t in pain other than being freaked out. The most disconcerting thing about it was the PICC line they sewed into my arm, a constant reminder.
I hope the reason later stage patients haven’t posted isn’t because they succumbed.
From personal experience:
Cancerous colon polyp–no sensation. I only learned of the polyp from blood in the stool.
Stage 0 Melanoma–no sensation.
Infiltrative basal-cell carcinoma–very mild itching.
Personally, I only had a basal cell ca., removed by Mohs surgery. My worst discomfort came after the procedure; even the paper adhesive tape was rough on my skin.
Of course, cancer pain can be dreadful. Please note that doctors in the past have sometimes hesitated to use sufficient painkillers. Some people (doctors, patients or relatives) had idiot ideas that one should be morally strong & fight the pain. Or that addiction should be avoided at all costs–especially ridiculous when long-term survival is not probable. Pain management is now a specialty–for all stages of cancer & other diseases.
Here’s a summary of available techniques for fighting cancer pain.
I had none of the common symptoms for Hodgkin’s disease; no weight loss, no night sweats, no fever. HD is usually painless.
I did have the rarest-of-rare symptom: every time I drank alcohol, I’d get a burning pain in my back. You know the icky achey stuff you get with a really bad flu? Make it more burny and amp it up a bit. It was centered right between my shoulder blades and spread down to my elbows.
When I really knew I was in trouble was when the pain suddenly decided to wake me from a dead sleep in the middle of the night. Amp that flu ache up by about 100. From then on it was constant and wouldn’t go away. At one point I rolled over and it felt like I’d just gotten stabbed with an electric cattle prod.
Once chemo started that pain was gone within about two weeks. I had some medication that caused bone pain, however – since chemo kills bone marrow, this was meant to amp up bone marrow production. So a day or two after chemo, I have a constant, low-grade kind of staticky pain, pretty much everywhere. I can only describe it as something like rats gnawing on my bones.
That’s awful. I’m sorry.
Do you know if the neck pain was caused by a swollen node pushing on the spine? Please note - my knowledge of cancer is limited at best.
My father (non-smoker) died of lung cancer. His cancer was at the top of his lungs and made swallowing difficult. He had chemo and radiation. The cancer eventually spead to his brain.
He never complained much about pain, and didn’t take that much pain med until the very end, but he wasn’t a complainer by nature. Either because of the morphine or because of the cancer, he eventually stopped eating. His body shut down, he went into a coma and died at home a few days later.
His mother died of pancreatic cancer. Because of her age they didn’t want to treat the cancer and wanted tosend her home with palliative care and 3 months to live. She fought for treatment and lived 21 months. During that time she fell outside the doctor’s office and broke her hip and came back from that. She only was in significant cancer pain the last 2 weeks of her life.
My mother had uterine cancer and breast cancer. She had the uterine cancer while she was carrying me. She had me three weeks early and had a hysterectomy. Went home to care for 5 kids under the age of 6. With the breast cancer, the pain was from the mastectomy. It didn’t heal well and they had to do surgery again to clear necrotic tissue and give her new edges to hopefully heal. She did.
My sister had breast cancer and thyroid cancer in the same year. Breast cancer treatment was two surgeries (lumpectomies), chemo and radiation. The worst of it was the radiation, but even that wasn’t horrible. The thyroid cancer was also two surgeries. A couple years later the thyoid has regrown and she had a third surgery to remove it, even though there was no sign of cancer, and had radiation to kill it for good. The radiation protocal for thyroid cancer is annoying, but not painful or debilitating.
Shall I go on to aunts, uncles, cousin, nieces and nephews?
The one good thing about most of my family’s cancers is that they don’t generally kill the person. Except for my dad and grandmother and one uncle who died at 4 years old because of a brain tumor, they all lived to fight another day.
StG
It wasn’t neck pain, it was in my back, between and across my shoulder blades and bleeding into my arms and down my back.
But from what I’ve read, the pain comes from the affected nodes becoming super-sensitive to alcohol. So, literally the same thing you get from the flu – your lymph nodes are working overtime to deal with the virus, and thus you feel achy.
And actually, I suspect that this thing was triggered by a bout of flu. First and only time I’ve ever had it, and the alcohol pains started soon after. My WAG is that the lymph nodes ramped up to deal with the virus, and then never got “shut off.”
Survivor of Stage 4 Hypopharyngeal Cancer. Pre treatment primarily a long lasting sore throat. This type of cancer generally progresses pretty far since there is not a significant amount of pain involved in the early stages and the pain that does present itself mimics common type ailments.
The pain from the treatment was something else. A combination of chemotherapy and radiation really knocked the hell out of me. Radiation in the head and neck area can be pretty painful.
At this point I’m glad I went through it as it has given me six great years. If it were to reoccur, I’m not sure that I could make it through a second time.
It gives me a lot of happiness to hear so many of you have survived - cancer has killed a lot of the people I’ve loved, and I’m scared as hell of it. Go you guys. 