Rationale Myelodysplastic Syndrome ( Mds ) - 1999 Words

Rationale: Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) is not something that is common throughout my family, but since most of our medical conditions were commonalities with the rest of the United States population, I took a particular interest in this unusual condition. My paternal grandfather – a farmer and a military veteran – was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 1996 at the age of 72, which was his cause of death in 1999. Several years prior to this he was diagnosed with what was once referred to as â€Å"pre-leukemia†, or myelodysplastic syndrome. Being a somewhat uncommon condition, only about 13,000 new cases appear in the United States each year, and this number is growing as the overall age of the population increases (American Cancer Society, 2015). Fortunately, I was young enough to not notice his health slowly deteriorate, as quality of life generally does with cancerous conditions. However, in my lifetime I have had several friends’ family members die of cancer and I have seen its debilitating effects. It is important for me to understand the causes and effects of this condition, and to what extent familial as well as environmental factors have on developing the disease. In order to properly understand this cancerous condition, this question must first be addressed: what is cancer? Generally, cancer is when cells in the body begin growing out of control. Instead of dying when they are supposed to, the cancer cells continue to grow in size as well as produce more