Jul 01

Doctor, doctor give me the news!

Thursday, July 1 – We had our appointment with the oncologist at 2:30 today. This was the appointment where we took the results of the PET scan and the surgical biopsy to turn them into a diagnosis, which the doctor gave us today.


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Diagnosis: I have Hodgkins Disease, Stage 3a (we hope). The type is nodular-sclerosing Hodgkins.

There is a lump on the right side of my neck, activity also on the left side of my neck, and 2 things in the spleen. It is stage 3 because there is cancer above and below my diaphragm.

After checking my bone marrow, which they took a sample of today (OUCH!), we will need to do an ECHO to check my heart function(July 7), a pulmonary function (pf) test to check my lung function(also July 7), and create a sperm bank in case treatment causes infertility (TBD). These tests will serve as a baseline for further tests down the road after treatment begins, and the sperm bank will ensure my ability to have children(even though I’m pretty sure now that I don’t want them).

Treatment: treatment will consisting of ABVD chemotherapy, occurring 12 times at a frequency of every 2 weeks. The treatment should last for six months.

We are looking at beginning treatment next week or the week after, following completion of all the tests mentioned above. Then it’s 6 months of chemo, and then we’re going to throw a HUGE party for Christmas and New Year’s!!! Get ready 🙂

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Jun 30

Back to Work

Back to work today for the first time since I went on vacation! It’s been almost 2 weeks, especially since I had to miss the Friday before vacation to have my PET scan done.

While it was different because I haven’t been there in so long, I am glad to be back. I’m still under doctor’s orders to take it easy and not lift anything, so I spent the majority of the day catching up on paperwork. Nothing too exciting happened, but it did feel really good to be back at work.

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Jun 30

48 hr checkup

Wednesday, June 30, 9am- 2 days after surgery, I went back to see the surgeon. After taking the bandages off, we got to see what my scars/port everything looked like. It was not as bad as I had expected. There was a bump where my port had been installed, another incision where they had put the port in my jugular, and a third incision on my right side where they had gotten the lymph node biopsy. And, even though they had the bandages off, everything was still covered in steri-strips.

The doctor said everything looked good, he asked us how our vacation at Glacier went, and said I was free to do anything except ‘swim in a lake’. Darn the bad luck!

After the appointment, Jacqui took me to work for a half day. First time back to work in almost 2 weeks!

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