12 What is mesothelioma metastasis?

Mesothelioma, like any other cancer, starts somewhere. And then from there, it usually spreads to lymph nodes. Lymph nodes are the normal filters of the blood. We all have lymph nodes. And then the lymph nodes are like the toll gate before you get on a highway. So if cancer cells have already gone in the lymph nodes, theoretically, there's a few cancer cells that may have already gone through the cold toll gate into the highway, gone through the lymph node into the bloodstream. And these microscopic cancer cells, once they're in the bloodstream, they can go to other organs, whether it's in the abdomen or the liver or the bone or the brain, and then they set up shop there, and they start growing and creating little cancers there. And that's what a metastasis is. It's spreading of the cancer to other organs. And most often, that's what we call stage four cancer, whether it's mesothelioma, lung cancer, esophagus cancer, once the cancer has gone through lymph nodes into the bloodstream and has gone to other organs, it's called metastatic or stage four cancer.