Lymph nodes

[Ksiemonsma]

I'm having trouble understanding why my doctor keeps telling me that my cancer hasn't moved to distant lymph nodes. 16 of the 27 harvested tested positive for cancer but only ones near my colon were harvested. Anyone with input on this?

[JJH]

I'm having trouble understanding why my doctor keeps telling me that my cancer hasn't moved to distant lymph nodes. 16 of the 27 harvested tested positive for cancer but only ones near my colon were harvested. Anyone with input on this?

The harvested lymph nodes are called Local lymph nodes. All other lymph nodes in the body are then considered Remote lymph nodes.

The Local lymph nodes cannot cause any problems any more because they have been removed permanently from your body. However, during the time when they were still in your body they might have released some cancer cells that then traveled to some distant lymph nodes along the vast network of lymphovasular pathways and have so far remained dormant or inactive there. When your doctor keeps telling you that cancer hasn't moved to distant lymph nodes, what he is saying is that whatever level of lympho-vascular invasion was present there to cause 16 of your Local lymph nodes to be infected was not severe enough to extend to any of your remaining, distant lymph nodes farther down the line -- at least as far as he can tell from whatever scans have been done so far.

However, since you did have 16 infected local lymph nodes, this is a risk factor that must be taken into account, so they will probably be examining all of your upcoming scans very closely to see if there is any new evidence that might suggest that some of your remaining distant lymph nodes are now showing signs of delayed infection by cancer.

You are now doing a regimen of adjuvant FOLFOX. The purpose of this treatment is to "mop up" any lingering tumor cells that might still be present in your body., including any dormant cancer cells that might still be in your remote lymph nodes or in the area near where your primary tumor used to be. Technically, you have been NED since surgery, since they have not found any evidence of cancer apart from the primary tumor and those 16 lymph nodes -- which have now been totally removed. When the fixed-length FOLFOX regimen is completed then you will be finished with treatment and will enter the 5-year surveillance period.

[Ksiemonsma]

Thanks for your input, kind of what I thought