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Comment by CartyBoston | Hacker News Reader

It's a beautiful essay, and I don't mean to undermine its gravity but one thing he mentioned has me curious. How does one conclude that two tumors are related? Might it be that the cancer that metastasized in his liver is independent of that that was in his eye?

He is a neurologist, I am not intending to challenge, just curious and I know there are people here that know much more than I do.

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My mom died from this exact same (super rare) cancer. Ocular melanoma almost always metastasizes to the liver. For a ocular melanoma survivor, a liver check every 6 months is highly recommended. It seems his tumor in his eye had the mutation that makes it very unlikely for it to metastasize (5%), the other half of tumors have a much higher rate (66%). Either way the metastasize will usually happen within the first 10 years after discovering the original tumor.

I'm guessing they did a biopsy of the tumor in the liver and found it was ocular melanoma. Elementary, my dear Watson.

That was my first post here, I want to watch my step.

Is an "ocular melanoma" any tumor discovered in the eye? Or is it mutated eye tissue that was subsequently discovered in his liver? Which would indeed be pretty definitive.

I do appreciate your help.

It's an tumor that "once" was a pigment cell.

Melanoma in the eye is most commonly of a type called uveal melanoma. Ocular melanoma would be any melanoma in the eye, including the more common skin types (e.g. nodular, or superficial spreading, which is the most common subtype) which metastasized to the eye (very rare). Uveal melanoma confounds most of the effective melanoma treatments to date, even the most current and exciting treatments that have come on the market in the last few years. The reason (rather, one reason) is that it shares few of the same genetic targets that the more common subtypes have.

A primary tumor which metastasizes elsewhere in the body has characteristics of the primary tumor, including genetic markers, which is what allows a pathologist to determine a likely origin.

He is an illustrious MD with connections to the best medical schools around. You can assume he has excellent doctors and excellent medical advice.

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