Other organs also can be affected. For example, some survivors of ALL show signs of heart damage from the chest irradiation and chemotherapy. The same goes for kids treated for brain cancer. Researchers at several medical schools in the Netherlands found that children who have overcome the disease tend to be overweight and to have high blood pressure. Meadows speculates that radiation to the head may disrupt hormone production, which helps regulate weight and blood pressure.
Cranial radiation can also hamper brain development.
She now uses a computer, writes fiction, and holds down a job as an office manager in her family's printing business in Atlanta, yet she has never roller-skated or bicycled, and has difficulty making change for a dollar. To minimize such damage, oncologists have dialed back head radiation doses, and many younger patients, especially those younger than 3, now get none at all. Probably the most disturbing question facing many survivors of childhood cancer is whether the toxic treatments will cause a new cancer. Va. In Lee's case it already has. At 15, she had a tumor in her left arm, and at 35 she developed breast cancer on her left side, probably linked to radiation she had received as a teen.