The Story of the Little Cell that Could

(Since this is a very serious topic, I decided to child it down a bit. Not to offend anyone, it’s just that If I did it more serious it’d just make a sad. Also, note that I’ve only put one picture in because I want to do the rest later and I don’t want to take someone else’s) 

So it all starts in the Sympathetic Nervous System, in that there is something called an “Adrenal Medulla” and they are made up of Chromaffin Cells. 

Our story begins when a Chromaffin Cell starts growing a Neuroendocrine Tumor, which kinda turns him evil.

By doing so the Chromaffin Cell is now infected which start affecting the other cells around him. Since that a couple cells are affected, this causes Chromaffin Cell to start over-producing hormones (or Catecholamines) with his new infected friends.

Since they’re in the Sympathetic Nervous System, they will likely settle near the head and neck area to grow outside the adrenal gland.

While they’re overdoing the production of hormones, this causes the body they live in to have high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, severe headaches, chest or abdominal pain, etc.

Because of this, the body they live in is more likely to die from heart attacks and strokes.

Not to worry though because there is a cure since the cells are in the tumour the simplest way is to get surgery to remove the Chromaffin Cell and his friends from the body. After that, the body is more obligated to live a healthier life without the Evil cell in them.

So that was the story but I’ll go into more detail about Paraganglioma.

First off, though it’s very similar, it’s not the same as Pheochromocytoma (such a mouth full) because a Paraganglioma tumour grows outside the adrenal glands.

Paraganglioma is pretty vague with how the Chromaffin Cell gets infected in the first place, but it’s obviously not a good thing. Paraganglioma is so bad that because it heavy affects a cell, it can be passed down genetically to your children.

Honestly, when I first started this project I really didn’t think I could so it seriously so like you saw up there, I simplified it. It was pretty easy with all the information I got from doing all the research cause if you put it in a really easy analogy it makes everything a lot clearer.

Though I kept running into fake websites, thanks to past lessons it was easy to see which was real. I used tools like Microsoft Word, Grammarly, one note, etc.

I wish I had more time to do drawings but I might just add them in next week if I have time.

That’s what I got, hope you enjoyed!

(Websites I used:

FloridaHospital.com- https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjE26-f8onUAhUCs1QKHdOoBV0QFggnMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.floridahospital.com%2Fparagangliomas%2Fsymptoms-and-signs-paragangliomas&usg=AFQjCNGuABVdqQonASA6eBzdBWyXmOUPAg&sig2=xPfTvtcoYrUZAE_ixANR4g

Cancer.gov- https://www.cancer.gov/types/pheochromocytoma/patient/pheochromocytoma-treatment-pdq

EndocrineDiseases.org- http://endocrinediseases.org/adrenal/paraganglioma.shtml

Britannica.com- https://www.britannica.com/science/chromaffin-cell

ColumbiaSurgery.org- http://columbiasurgery.org/conditions-and-treatments/paraganglioma

CancerNetwork.com- http://www.cancernetwork.com/oncology-journal/paraganglioma-potentially-challenging-tumor)

 

 

 

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