Lymphoma

My nurse, Anne, called me while I was laid up at home, and said the CAT scan appears to confirm their earlier diagnosis: I have lymphoma. A biopsy will have to be scheduled.

To forestall people losing their cool, the following:

One reason this site was started was to point to relatively current information. If people look at books and other information on lymphoma more than 10 years old they may get the feeling that lymphoma is hard to treat. A book from 30 years ago would frighten even the most hearty person.

The fact is that lymphoma treatments have gotten quite good in the last 30 years with real treatment breakthroughs in the last 10 years (and in the case of some non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas treatments that are just recently developed). So the operative words are “do not panic”.

There are 20 to 30 different types of lymphoma. Treatment and outcome can vary between types. Also a very important factor is the stage or spread of the disease. Often times localized disease is much easier to treat effectively than cancer that has spread to multiple sites in the body. BUT: widespread disease is NOT cause for alarm. To present a case study – the author is a survivor of stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (with lung and marrow involvement) – about as widespread as it gets. With the standard chemotherapy for this condition, the author achieved a complete remission (cancer gone) in less than 9 months.

Will everyone respond well to treatment – one cannot say, each individual responds differently. Fortunately if one treatment is less effective or ineffective there often is another treatment (or a third or fourth treatment) that may very well work. This combined with the new treatments being developed give a high degree of hope to those diagnosed with lymphoma.

http://www.lymphomainfo.net/lymphoma/prognosis.html

I appreciate everyone’s concern, but what I need are cool heads right now. If there’s a time to freak out, it’ll be later, and it’ll be obvious. It’s not now.

And Joel, if you’re reading this, finish that run! I want pictures. I’m very proud of you — it’s a hell of a great idea you two had, and I wanna see pictures.

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