Me and my friend Hodge

So, I'm sure a lot of you have heard through the grapevine (CCR sweet band) that I have come down with this little thing called Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  Translate that and basically it is cancer in the lymphatic system.  Don't get too freaked out though apparently its super treatable and responds well to modern treatments.  That's the upside to it; the downside is that the treatment sucks.  I'm not too sure at this point what stage I'm at, it is atleast a stage II.  Which means that it is noticeably in two areas of my sexy body.  My chest and neck.  I have a few more tests to complete to have a better idea what stage Hodge is on.  There are four possible stages that Hodge could be on.  I have to get a full body scan to make sure it's not anywhere besides chest and neck, I have to have bone marrow taken out and tested to make sure it's not in the bones, I will have to get an ultrasound of my heart make sure it's health for treatment which I'm sure it is, and get a port put in my chest.  All of this here in the next two weeks.  Plus I have work and school is starting up on the 25th, what a crazy life!  Well that's the most updated info that I have for you, but here is how it all started and when I started noticing it.

During this year I have noticed that I am tired quite a bit, like physically fatigued.  Nina and I supposed that it was from the ridiculous work/school/church load that I constantly put on myself.  I work 40-50 hours a week, I go to school full time, I'm involved in church activities and callings.  Since I've come home from serving a LDS full time mission in Thailand for two years I've been assigned as an elder's quorum president.  That has literally been the only calling I've had for the last 7 years until just recently.  We figured that I was just tired from overworking myself and stress.  We didn't think much of it.

I also noticed quite a while ago that my arms and legs (around my ankles) are itchy often.  There isn't a rash or any visible sign of what would be causing them to be so dang itchy.  After a while I started thinking why won't the itchiness go away.

In June I started having some chest pain.  It wasn't my whole chest it was on the right side between some lower ribs.  It wasn't all the time pain it would come and go, but when it hit me it was a sharp stabbing pain.  I'm pretty active so I thought that I pulled a rib, or strained something working out or playing basketball.  I figured that it would heal with time and go away.  For about two weeks it wasn't really going away.  That's when I noticed a lump on my neck.

While I was shaving one day I noticed that one side at the base of my neck where the collar bone meets (the right side) was a little bulgy, and I felt it and it felt like a lump was forming.  I felt the other side to compare and sure enough that one side was different.  That's when I started thinking that something was up.  I waited a few days to see if it would go down but it didn't go away.  It didn't really keep growing there was just a bump there that wasn't going away.  So after a few days we looked up a family doctor and went in.

We went and saw Dr. Hubbard, and he felt around my chest and neck and we talked about how I was feeling.  He wanted to do some blood work and scan my chest and neck area just to be safe.  He explained that it could be a number of things from something really minor but it could also be serious so it would be best to be safe and check.  So we did and the blood work came back perfectly ok.  The CT scan though came back saying that my lymph nodes were abnormally swollen.  So because of that I was referred to an oncologist, which is a doctor more familiar with cancer stuff.  Dr. Te (oncologist) recommended that we get a biopsy done and see if it is lymphoma.  Nina was pretty freaked out, nobody likes hearing the bad news or worse case situations, but she's held up pretty well.  My attitude is lets just get this over with and let me keep on enjoying life.

From Dr. Te we went and met Dr. Meyers the biopsy guy.  He explained everything that they were gonna do and where to take the sample from.  He decided right from my neck was easiest and best.  So we scheduled an appointment to do the surgery at the hospital.  Hospitals are always fun, they charge you a ton, but at least the staff was fun and friendly.  We checked in and I changed into the bare butt gown, waited around while they did all the prep stuff, and the last thing I remember was wheeling down the halls with the anesthesia guy to the operating room.  When I woke up some nurse lady was trying to feed me ice and give me crackers to eat.  My neck was pretty sore since he had to cut through muscle and stuff to get to the lymph node.  The next couple days were nerve racking because we were just hoping that the news would come back negative for lymphoma.  But a couple days later we got a phone call from Dr. Meyers that the results came in and I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma and it was at least a stage II.  Awesome.

It doesn't really matter how much you brace yourself for the worst news possible when you hear it, it isn't necessarily devastating, it's just disappointing.  Mostly the disappointment is the fact that you know where things go from that point.  It's not bad but it's not going to be good.  You know from the start that the road ahead is bumpy and it's going to take effort to continue.

That's brings us up to where I am now.  Few more tests to go just to make sure that it's not further than stage II.  And months of chemo/radiation ahead of me.  It's do-able.  There are lots of people that I will probably meet in the future now that will go through similar things.  I know that I will be able to help them just like others have stepped into my life to help me.  I'm not just beating this cancer thing for myself, but I'm doing it because I love my family, I love my friends, and I know that this experience will turn out to be a good thing for a lot of people.  It will be an opportunity for a lot of people to grow, to come together, and to look back on and just be another one of those stories that we laugh at every time we tell it sitting around a table.