Not everyone that has cancer gets pain but if you do it may be for lots of reasons:
- sometimes a tumour presses on the tissues around it, or on a nerve.
- if the cancer has spread from its original (primary) place to other parts of your body (secondaries or metastases) it may cause pain, especially in the bones.
- infection can cause inflammation in a certain part of the body.
- having surgery or radiotherapy may cause pain.
- sometimes, pain is felt in parts of the body far away from the cancer that is causing it. This type of pain is called referred pain.
It’s only natural when you’ve had cancer to think any new pain might be the cancer coming back. Most of the time that’s not the case.
Sometimes pain can be worse if you’re feeling down or something has upset you. This doesn’t mean you’re making it up. You’re probably just not able to deal with it as well because you’re feeling low.
