My surgeon mentioned that at least three of the lymph nodes he removed when he did my initial colectomy last week were swollen. He went on to say that he's seen "many" cases where the regional lymph nodes were swollen but ultimately not found to be cancerous. I forgot to ask whether he's also seen cases where non-swollen lymph nodes were found to be malignant.
Now I don't think my surgeon would lie to me but I do think he's a very nice guy and may be exaggerating a bit on the optimistic side to try and calm my nerves as we wait for the pathology report (which is due any day now). So here's my curiosity poll:
If your surgeon mentioned finding lymph nodes that were swollen during your initial surgery, did they all ultimately turn out to be involved? And on the flip side, did pathology find cancerous lymph nodes above and beyond any that appeared to be swollen?
Thanks for humoring me as I obsess about this...
**Update**
Got a call from the surgeon this morning. Pathology is in. Looks like I'm Stage IIIB. Three x 2.5cm tumor. Two of 20 lymph nodes were positive. T3N1M0. Clean margins. Moderately-differentiated. There is evidence of vascular but no perineural invasion. No evidence of cancer on my uterus or left ovary which were adhered to the colon and removed. He did say one lymph node showed extranodal extension (i.e. the cancer had fully taken the node over and extended beyond it by .3 cm). Not exactly sure if that's significant.