HI Ms. M,

The thymus is a organ that is essential in childhood in helping the infant/child devlop thier immune system. It is the organ where all of the mother's antibodies are stored (or at least concentrated in that area) and it serves as the command center for the immune system during the formative years of life. Over time this thymus is SUPPOSED to atrophy and eventually (i think my doctor said by age 40) be replaced by adipose tissue (fat) through a process called apoptosis. The problem in MG is that they thymus doesn't go away like it is supposed to and infact sometimes it actually becomes hyperplasic (enlarged) or devlops thyromas (tumors). Thyromas can be begin OR malignant. Because you had a begin tumor before does not rule out the possiblity of the tumor itself growing back. In fact in many people with MG if there was a thyroma present then sometimes it does grow back. Also i was reading the literature (medical) the other day and there has been a very recent discovery that there is such a thing as MICROthyromas. these are little microscopic tumors that reside in the thymus and surrounding tissue and it takes an extreamly high powered microscope to see them. back when you had the histology (analysis) of your tumor done in 1999 they did not know about micro thyromas and thus would have likely concluded that even if the thymus was enlarged that it was only "swollen" when in fact that could be b/c there might have been lots of microscopic thyromas in addition to what ever other abnormalities were discovered. If one of those micro thyromas were left in your chest (b/c like i said they not only invade the thymus but also the surrounding tissue) then it would seem possible that over the past 9 years that the micro thyroma grew until it filled up the hole. Thyromas are thymic derrrivitave tissue (basicly thymic tissue that gets really confused as to what it is supposed to be doing) and it is basicly a area of abnormal cell clustering (which the type of cells that cluster in a thyroma determine if it is benign or malignant).

please understand, i AM NOT A DOCTOR and I AM NOT A NURSE or even a medical professional. I majored in psychology in college and took 5 physiolgical psych and regular phsyio classes. I am an avid literature researcher (especially in the area of MG) and i am currently doing literature research on thymectomies b/c i am considered as a canidate for a thymectomy as i have MG and a severe form of it and my thymus is hyperplasic (enlarged). so most of what i have just told you is based up on extensive literature searches and discussions with my own surgen at Medical College in Augusta, Georgia, USA.. You may want to print this reply and take it with you to your surgeon b/c i certainly do not claim to know everything and i would feel much better if you ran this hypothesis by him and see what he thinks. if need be i can send you the link to the article about the micro thyromas (if i can find it again). just message me thorugh neurotalk and let me know if you need/want additional info (though i have about exhausted my knowledge base in this reply).

Hope this helps!
sincerely, bobcat