By Jim Buie
Sister Mary Joseph Nodules—A Cruel Revelation
My first reaction was: Colon Cancer? How can this be? I’ve visited the doctor faithfully, every
six months, you see. Blood work done, medications taken, colonoscopies on time, No family
cancer history—yet here’s this mountain to climb.
It started with bumps around my belly button’s mark, Could it be hernia surgery’s aftershock, a
mistaken spark? Five doctors treated fungal, yeast, and the unknown, I self-treated, searching for
answers, but hope was overthrown.
Through four to five months, pain and burning my constant plight, Pills and creams given, yet no
comfort in sight. The fourth doctor suggested a biopsy’s might, I scheduled a colonoscopy with
the fifth, seeking light.
He said he’d never seen anything like this before, Cut a bump, sent it to pathology’s core. Cancer
came the verdict, a shadow on my door, The last thing I expected, my heart sank to the floor.
The cancer doctor named them: Sister Mary Joseph Nodules, Metastatic cancer, their verdict’s
gavel. My judge and jury, he sentenced me with a sigh, The cancer had spread—no cure could he
imply.
Crap, not the news I wanted to hear, A PET scan, a port, chemo drawing near. In this battle,
maybe I’ll live a bit longer, In this journey uncertain, only the time of my demise is unclear.
The name, was originally coined by Sir Hamilton Bailey, an English surgeon and the first to mention it in its book “Demonstrations of Physical Signs in Clinical Surgery”, published in 1949, honoring the Sister Mary Joseph (1856-1939), who was superintendent nurse and Dr. William Mayo most frequent first assistant, at the St. Mary’s Hospital (now Mayo Clinic) of Rochester, Minnesota.
The Sister Mary Joseph, was the first person who observed that the patients with advanced abdominal-pelvic malignancies, frequently presented a periumbilical palpable nodule.
