A mystery remains: where is the original cancer? The cancerous lymph nodes that professor Ko operated on were a metastasis, an off-shoot of an original cancer. Judging by the nature of the cells, the primary site should be somewhere behind the nose or in the mouth. I’ve done two CT-scans, one MRI, one full-body PET and one head-and-neck PET. In addition, professor Ko has inspected and prodded me with assorted mirrors and probes. Yet nothing has been found.
One possibility is that the original cancer is so small that it can’t even be detected with a microscope. If so, it should be fairly easy to wipe it out with the help of chemo and radiation. Another, weirder, possibility is that there is no original cancer. There is a metastasis, in other words, but no cancer which the metastasis is a metastasis of. Apparently there are some reported cases like this. Professor Ko sent me this paper:
Diane is already annoyed. “You couldn’t just have a normal cancer, could you? You had to have to have something special. What a show-off!”