Friday, January 23, 2009

Lympoma resources

This first post will mostly be wikipedia entries, but they are a pretty good start.

For a basic primer - cancer is a set of diseases characterized by unregulated cell growth. The name of the cancer often tells you what area of the body was the origin of the problem (e.g. lung cancer starts with lung cells which grow without regulation.). For those curious about why growth is bad, just remember that your body (after puberty) is supposed to stay roughly the same size. This means that your lungs or any other organ is not supposed to grow any larger. Cells divide only to replace dying cells. Thus they keep roughly the same size.

Lymphoma is a type of cancer which originates in the lymph cells of the body.

Dad's doctor called it large B-cell lymphoma. That is not a link on wiki, although there are several types of B-cell lymphoma.

You can learn about B-cells on wikipedia. They are type of white blood cell and part of the immune system.

1 comment:

Sara said...

thanks for doing this, sam. i appreciate reading this.