Receiving a cancer diagnosis can feel like crossing the border into a new country, one with its own language, customs, and laws. Following a cancer diagnosis, people may find themselves sprinting to absorb a new vocabulary of often intimidating words.
One of those words is metastasis. For anyone who isn’t an oncologist or who doesn’t have prior experience with cancer, the word may be unfamiliar or fraught with vague but scary connotations. A person with a cancer diagnosis may not know the dictionary definition of metastasis, but most people know it isn’t good.
But what exactly is metastasis? When we say cancer has metastasized, what does that mean?
We recently spoke with Diana Cittelly, PhD, a University of Colorado (CU) Cancer Center member and associate professor of pathology in the CU School of Medicine, to gain an understanding of metastasis.