Pathology

The pathology results on the specimens we brought back contained no big surprises, which was I suppose good and bad. The mass on Joshua's back was an aggressive myxoid liposarcoma; his prognosis would not have been good. Adam's neck mass is a large cell lymphoma; I had been hoping it would be a Burkitt's lymphoma, which could be treated. I am trying to find out if he could be treated. The breast cancers were all pretty much as expected, though none of the three were hormone receptor positive, and that is a poor prognostic factor. Dr. Johnson's patient with the probably uterine sarcoma turns out to have a carcinosarcoma, or malignant mixed Mullerian tumor, which apparently is difficult to treat even in a resource-intense setting. So nothing too surprising, but no particularly good news either. Oh, except for Precillar's friend with the enlarged cervical lymph nodes: that appears to be infectious or inflammatory in nature rather than neoplastic, so that is good for him.