Staging/Grading of Cancer and Slowly Finding Peace

Hope you're all up for more learning. This stuff is absolutely fascinating. Today we'll dive into the differences in cancer grades as compared to clinical vs. pathological cancer staging. 

Johns Hopkins outlines the differences very well, so I have linked that website for reference and will try to put it into an easy to read format:

First, we'll learn about the TNM System for Staging and the difference between clinical (c) and pathological (p) staging. Until surgery, the final, pathological, staging cannot be completed. This will be the true, what they found, real extent of the tumor and provides the most accurate picture of the extent of the cancer. The clinical staging is developed only from diagnostic imaging of ultrasound, biopsy, mammogram, MRI, and PET scans, just to name a few.

• Size of the tumor (T): How large is the area of cancer?
• Spread to lymph nodes (N): Has the cancer spread to nearby lymph nodes?
• Metastasis to distant sites (M): Has the cancer spread to other areas of the body?

I am a T2cN0M0. 

What does this mean? 

Since the size makes the T, the 2.2 cm at it's largest point made it a 2. Since no diagnostic imaging indicated confirmation of lymph node (L) involvement or metastases (M), they landed at a 0. You may be remembering the T11 vertebral area found on PET Scan and MRI, but due to a lack of confirmation from that imaging, I stand as an M0. 

The goal still stands to biopsy T11 during surgery which will give us a more definitive answer of my pathological M score. I will undergo a sentinel lymph node biopsy which will provide the pathological L score.

The breast cancer stage, which comes in a stage 0, I, II, III, or IV with possible A's, B's, and C's, is developed from the TNM Staging. It gets pretty involved and has an if this than that approach. I'll leave it to the professionals.

I'm a Stage IIA.

Finally, the grade. The grade of a breast cancer is a prognostic factor and is representative of the "aggressive potential" of the tumor.

• Grade of the cancer (G): How closely do cancer cells resemble normal cells?

I'm a Grade 2.

Even while I wrote this post, I had to wrap my head around grades vs. stages to keep it all straight. I hope this helps bring some clarity into the different ways we look at and provide an objective common language to cancer.