[Verse 1] Under the epithelium a wall stands thin and strict, the basement membrane holding back what chaos wants to pick, carcinoma cells go restless, forge their tiny knives, matrix metalloproteinases slicing through for new lives, then they shift, epithelial turning mesenchymal and sly, shedding grip, growing limbs, learning how to fly, friable now, the border crumbles, soldiers start to roam, that's invasion whispering: the cell has left its home. [Chorus] Seed and soil, that's Paget's secret, colon courts the liver's door, portal blood's the river rolling tumor to that shore, lymph nodes trap carcinoma, blood runs sarcoma's chase, transcoelomic crosses bellies, ovary and stomach's space, Virchow left, Joseph's navel, Krukenberg in the ovary low, Blumer's shelf along the rectum — now you've got the map to go. [Verse 2] Eighteen eighty-nine, a surgeon named Paget wrote it plain: tumors don't just scatter random, there's a method to the pain, some seeds only root in fitting soil, chosen, not by chance, colon cells ride portal vein straight into the liver's dance, that's why we resect those metastases, cut them clean and whole, while follicular thyroid skips the nodes, floats the bloodstream's role. [Verse 3] Three roads leave the tumor's town, each marching its own way, lymphatic courts carcinoma, quiet, slow, and gray, hematogenous is bloodborne, sarcomas ride that train, transcoelomic drifts like pollen on the peritoneal plane, ovarian and gastric cells go sailing, shore to shore, know the road a traveler walks to know what lies in store. [Chorus] Seed and soil, that's Paget's secret, colon courts the liver's door, portal blood's the river rolling tumor to that shore, lymph nodes trap carcinoma, blood runs sarcoma's chase, transcoelomic crosses bellies, ovary and stomach's space, Virchow left, Joseph's navel, Krukenberg in the ovary low, Blumer's shelf along the rectum — now you've got the map to go. [Verse 4] Press above the collarbone, the left and not the right, Virchow's node swells silent there, a sentinel in sight, Sister Mary Joseph marks a lump around the navel's ring, Krukenberg fills both ovaries though stomach's where they spring, Blumer's shelf, a rectal ledge beneath the examiner's hand, deposits dropped like silt and settled, scattered through the land. [Bridge] Why learn names of doctors dead a hundred years and more? Because the route of spread decides which organ needs the chore, a liver met, a peritoneal spill, a node that won't resolve, the path the cancer wandered tells you how the case gets solved. [Outro] Seed and soil, seed and soil, remember where it's bound, membrane broken, cells reborn, mesenchymal, outward bound, lymph and blood and peritoneum, three rivers to the sea, now you hold the travel log of malignancy.
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