I have cancer

Let me start this off with the big statement. Yes, I have cancer. More specifically I have been diagnosed with B-cell Lymphoma, commonly known as “Non Hodgkins Disease”. Now while you’re googling that up in another window, I’ll tell my story.

Back in October of 2007, I went on a family vacation to Washington DC. Our first ever family trip. I came back from DC with a rather large swollen bug bite on my left wrist. This bug bite also became quite itchy as you can imagine. But ever since I came back with the bug bite, I started itching in other places other than my wrist. Eventually I started itching almost everywhere. It was getting pretty bad, as I’d scratch through the skin in some places. This went on for about a month or two before I finally gave in and went to the doctor. Doctor simply said I had Excema and told me not to scratch and gave me some steroid cream. He said if I didn’t scratch, my skin will grow back in about a month. Yah, simpler said than done.

A couple of weeks later, around Christmas time, I got a bad flu. I was sick for about a week, and I didn’t see the doctor until I got worse at the end of the first week. Getting off the couch, to the fridge, and back to the couch would totally wind me, finally convinced me to see the doctor. Plus my upcoming trip and cruise with no access to a doctor pretty much said see the doctor now or suffer big time on the cruise. The nurse took a look at me with pity, took a look around, and said I was sick with the flu. She had the doctor prescribe me some inhalers, Q-var and Albuterol, for the asthma like symptoms. I took my dosage, and was feeling better, and got better, except for that cough that would linger on.

Two months later, I’m still coughing. I’m not showing any more flu symptoms, I feel totally fine. But that damn cough is still lingering. But now it just suddenly got a bit worse. I’m just coughing, nothing is coughing out. Ok, enough is enough, time to go back to the doctor. This time, I see my primary physician (I’m with Kaiser) and he goes over me, and says I probably have back to back flus. Not uncommon this year, with the flu vaccine only being effective for about 40% of the flus. Everyone’s getting sick, and it’s probably just lingering from two maybe three different flus. But he ponders for a second and says “But you’ve been sick for a while. I’m going to order you a xray just to be sure”. He also prescribes me some more Q-var and sends me over to radiology for the x-ray. I go get my x-ray done, and said the doctor will know in a couple of days. Oh, I forgot to mention that I’m still itching like mad, decide that I needed to see a dermatologist, and had just came from the dermatologist earlier that day. The dermatologist had also said I had excema gave me more info on it, prescribed me some even stronger steroid cream, some strong antihistamine, similar to benadryl, and told me to take Claritin during the day, and the antihistimines at night to help control my itching. My primary doctor (he had originally prescribed me the first batch of cream) commented that the dermatologist had just prescribed me a different cream when looking at my file on the computer.

The next day, the doctor called me up and told me he says a lump that might be in the lung. Yikes! A lump?! That’s not good!

The doctor says he wants to take a better look at it, so he orders me a CT scan (CAT Scan) They call back and schedule me for an appointment about a week later. Trying not to fear the worse, I think to myself ‘Well no wonder I’m coughing, there’s a freaking lump in my lung”.

I go in for my CT scan, I get to wear one of those funky three armed hospital gowns, sit on a moving table, and get injected with iodine, which makes you all warm inside, but also makes you want to pee. I then go through this big ring with sensors, laser positioning, and spinning things. This only takes a few minutes, and I’m done.

The next day, the doctor calls. Boy I’m hearing a lot from the doctor lately. He says I definitely have a rather large lump. He starts to rattle off a list of things it might be, none of which I got or understood. He then tells me that I need a biopsy and puts in a order for one. My heart sunk a little lower, and now I’m getting a bit more concerned. But at this point it could be anything. But I’m still keeping positive thinking it’s just a lump and probably not cancer.

A few more days pass by (or was it almost a week?) before I go in for my biopsy. This one I needed someone to drive me to the hospital, so I let my parents in on my medical condition. Only a few people knew what was going on, including Betty, my gf. Oh, did I mention we’ve been dating for quite a few months now? Well that’s another blog entry for later. I’ve been updating my oldest sister, Carrie on my medical condition. I haven’t been telling my parents because I didn’t want to worry them. Especially since nobody knows what’s going on yet. But this time I needed them to drive me back from the hospital, so I updated them on what’s going on. I’m not sure they understood 100% because of the lack of reaction I got. I didn’t want to worry them further, or scream “I might have cancer! Sound worried!” If they were in a bit of blissful state of ignorance, I thought it best to leave them there until there was a need to shake them out of it. My second oldest sister, Vicky, had just gone to Asia for vacation when the whole ordeal happened, so she doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s going on. Vicky’s due back home in a couple of days, so I figure I’ll break the news when she gets home. Hopefully I’ll have some good news by then.

I meet the doctor doing the biopsy, and that’s when I learned that the lump wasn’t in my lung like I had thought, but in my chest. He showed me the CT scan I took. He had to point out the lump versus all the other organs including the heart and lungs and stuff. It looked pretty large on the computer monitor, so I asked him how big it was. He measured it on the computer program, came out to be about 100mm x 90mm, or 10cm x 9cm. Yikes! That’s huge, I kept exclaiming. He said it’s not really that big. Since the lump is in my chest and he can’t directly see the lump, he could either do the biopsy with needles and see where he’s going with ultrasound, which was faster, or he could do it with needles and stop every couple of minutes and use the CT scanner, which was slower. He decided it looks easy enough to use ultrasound. He asked if I was nervous, I said “yes!” and he gave me “something to relax”. I have nothing against taking drugs, the more the better. And I haven’t had any bad reactions to any drugs yet. So I’m laying flat on my back, the doc has a ultrasound on my chest, some huge needles waiting. He shoots me up with lidocaine so I don’t feel anything. If I’m not supposed to feel anything, then why does the needle with the lidocaine hurt so much? He then tells me the lump is close to the lung, and when he tells me not to breathe, don’t breathe. Don’t take any big breaths, inhale deeply or anything like that during the entire procedure, or it might cause the needle to move, shift, and possibly poke my lung causing my lung to deflate. After seeing my eyes nearly pop from my head when he said that, he added that he could inflate my lung, but he’d rather not do that. I agreed with that sentiment, and took normal breathes. While I didn’t get to see what was going on with the needles since it was on my chest, and I would have to bend my head forward to see what was going on, I could see his hands working the needles in. I think he used a big needle as a tube, used the ultrasound to guide it to the lump, then used the smaller ones for the sample. He was supposed to get 5 samples, but ended up getting 6 because he said one of them didn’t quite come out right. When he said ok, don’t breathe, I held my breathe, remembering not to inhale, and felt quite a bit of pain when he used sharp repeated jabbing motions. I guess the lidocaine didn’t quite numb everything up because that hurt quite a bit. And that was just the first sample. Eventually he got all the samples he needed, and it was over. They put a band aid over the spot where the needle went, let me rest for a few minutes and said I could go. I inquired when I’ll know of the results, and the doctor told me probably about a week. A week? Damn that seems like a long time.

The next afternoon the doctor calls me again. Whenever the doctor calls you directly, it’s usually not good news. Usually the assistant calls you up telling you everything came out normal, or they just send you a letter in the mail telling you things are normal. But I’m hearing from the doctor quite a bit lately. He says the initial lab results are in, and it’s not final yet, but it looks like I have Hodgkins Disease. WTF is Hodgkins Disease I ask him? I instantly start googling Hodgkins Disease, with the doctor on the phone. He tells me I can look it up on the internet, but I’m already clicking on the first link. First link comes up and says “Cancer of the lymph nodes”. First thing I say while hunched standing over the keyboard is “It’s cancer? Of the lymph nodes?” The doctor then replies back “Yeah, it’s cancer.” My butt suddenly drops, luckily my chair was right beneath me. I’m flabbergasted. I need to know more info about Hodgkins Disease. The doc then proceeds to tell me the success rate is very high, and that I’m young and healthy. He then says that it’s not the final diagnosis yet. But he orders me another cat scan, blood tests, and orders me a visit with the oncology department. He figures I’ll get the final lab results before my appointment with oncology, and they’ll take it from there. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this Hodgkins Disease, so I’m googling like mad and reading everything I can. 90-95% success rate in the early stages, so that’s very promising. But 70% success rate in the advanced stage doesn’t look so great. Chemo and radiation therapy however doesn’t sound so good either. Some of the symptoms, include, ah-ha! Itchy skin! No wonder I’ve been scratching. Now it starts to hit me, “I have cancer”. Morbid thoughts start coming into my head. What if scenarios play through my mind. What if I don’t make it? Oh man, I need to tell people. Betty’s not online, probably in a meeting. I don’t wanna tell my parents yet. Not ready right now to talk to them, I need more info and to explain it to them. I give my oldest sister Carrie a call, and give her the bad news. She, like me, instantly googled Hodgkins Disease. It starts to sink in for her too, emotions start emanating from her voice. It wasn’t that long ago, earlier last year, we had concerns that our parents time was finite, which was one of the main reasons we had our family trip. Now I realize that my own time may be finite.

Betty’s back online, so I call her up and break the news to her. Her voice cracks under the weight of the news. She also immediately googles Hodgkins Disease.

I slowly start telling some of my other friends. A few of them even knew somebody with Hodgkins Disease, and they made it through just fine. Encouraging words, but still worrisome. There’s still a lot of questions I needed answered. How aggressive is it? Has it spread to any other part of my lymph nodes? What treaments? How will they affect me? What about work?

I go in for my second CAT scan, this time I drink 3 bottles of barium dye before I go in, and they inject me with more iodine. The 3 bottles of barium doesn’t quite agree with my stomache, and it’s like I’m lactose intolerant. Large amounts of gas is escaping my body the very loud way, and even more gas is building up pressure in my intestines. It all goes away after about a day, but it made for quite an uncomfortable day.

The doctor calls me back about a week after his last call. Final lab results are in. He says I have B cell lymphoma, or commonly called Non Hodgkins Disease. Oh great, all this time I’ve been doing research on Hodgkins, I’ve seen the reference to Non Hodgkins but didn’t read up on it. Now I’m googling up b cell lymphoma, and getting tons of medical references, but nothing for the layman. The doc then tells me it’s more aggressive than Hodgkins Disease, and treatment will also be more aggressive. I ask him what the success rate is, and he says slightly lower. But I have a good chance being young and healthy. Oh great, slightly lower, just how much lower is slightly lower? Googling non hodgkins gives me better results, but there’s many subtypes, as well as a couple of b cell lymphoma subtypes. But none of the websites are giving me any success rate percentages. All I have to go on is slightly lower.