Question: After recovering from cancer, do patients have long term effects, and does having cancer once act as a vaccination for any other times?

Louise Brown answered on 20 Nov 2013:

Wow! I had never thought about people having cancer once giving them immunity!

Unfortunately, I don’t think it works like that. Cancer cells are very very evolved, and can make themselves look like our normal cells, so our body doesn’t know anything is wrong and doesn’t attack the cells. Because of this, there is no immune response against the cells, so no memory immune cells are created (these are the ones that remember an infection like chicken pox if we’ve had it once). Cool idea though!

As for long term effects after recovery, sometimes you can get the cancer again (relapse) because cancer stem cells stayed behind and chemotherapy didn’t get them all. Sometimes you can get a different cancer, such as leukaemia, because of the chemotherapy for a different cancer (called therapy related leukaemia, it is common when types of drugs called topoisomerase II poisons (such as mitoxantrone) are used) .

Some other more general side effects after therapy are feeling very tired, swelling in the limbs (lymphoedema),cognitive changes (so brain changes sometimes called chemo brain), mouth and teeth problems, bone loss (osteoporosis) and hair loss or other physical changes. about 20% of people say they experience a side effect 1-5 years after diagnosis! That’s quite alot isn’t it!