Well, it's Sarcoma Awareness Week. I felt like I ought to do something for it, so I am making a short informative post. If you're anything like me, you don't much about sarcoma nor even heard much about it before.
Sarcoma is the name for a tumor arising in connective tissue with the embryonic ancestry of mesoderm. Bones, muscles, cartilage, etc. Soft-tissue sarcoma is cancer of an element within connective tissue while not the tissue itself (like, for example, synovial sarcoma).
About one percent of all cancer diagnoses are a type of sarcoma. Many types occur mostly in children, like Ewing's sarcoma and osteosarcoma (both are types of bone tumor). There are some that occur mainly in adults.
It's a rare disease.
I found out all of that information from Wikipedia.
I will also tell you a bit about my favorite sarcoma, synovial sarcoma. It's so named because the cells look a bit like they came from the synovium (the fluid between joints) but that's not necessarily where the tumor springs from. My tumor was nowhere near a joint.
It comes because of a reciprocal translocation between chromosomes 18 and X. The resulting fusion gene leads to the cells multiplying at an alarming rate and creating the tumor. (There's a bit more to it than that, but most of my readers aren't molecular biologists.)
Typical treatment includes surgery to remove the tumor, radiation therapy to the affected area, and chemotherapy (typically doxorubicin and ifosfamide, two nasty nasty chemicals). Depending on the clinical trial, radiation can occur both before and after the surgery. Luckily, mine was only before. I was still peeling four months after that treatment.
I feel like I should ask people to donate to some sarcoma research time or other, but I don't really feel like it. It's a rare disease. You're not super likely to know anyone that gets it.
Besides me.
"My Medea"
P.S.: If you're interested in hearing some of my reflections about my treatment, check out
this post. There's not much there regarding what actually happened, but it does list some cool things that went on in the name of science!
