My Journey

This past Friday I had my consultation appointment at Stanford with the bone marrow transplant team to discuss the next phase of my treatment plan and go over the options available to me. Unfortunately with a diagnosis of double hit lymphoma, chemo alone will not be effective enough. I would need some sort of bone marrow transplant in order to knock it into complete remission. I met with my Stanford care team and was impressed at how much they already knew about my entire medical history even before we discussed anything. I met with my primary oncologist, another oncologist and my primary nurse. They were all very nice people and showed that they really do care about their patients. They presented me with their treatment options they prescribe to their patients:  1. Autologous stem cell transplant. This involves extracting a patient's own stem cells from their bone marrow and giving them high dose chemo (much stronger chemo than the RICE I was receiving) which effectively wipes ou...

For those of you who haven't heard by now, I had a relapse in late May and my cancer came back. I first noticed a small lump on the right side of my face. At first I thought it was some sort of insect bite but then the lump grew bigger over the course of the next several days. Then I thought it might be some sort of sinus infection as I also had trouble breathing through the right side of my nose, so I naturally thought - or rather hoped- that it was a sinus infection. But as the lump kept growing, I became more worried as it was now impacting part of my visibility in my right eye. When you have had cancer especially cancer of the lymph nodes, any lump, bump or swelling is cause for concern, and any slight unexplained symptom is also cause for alarm. I emailed my oncologist about it after a few days and he also attributed to most likely an infection given my cancer diagnosis had been in my abdominal area. He told me to check in with my primary physician. Following a video call with...

Today is Day 6 of recovery following my last chemo treatment and I'm finally feeling back to normal. I just went through cycle #3 last week and endured 4 straight days of RICE regimen where my body was pumped about 40 lbs of chemo drugs over the course of those 4 days. When they took my weight last Tuesday, I was at 147lbs. When I got home last Friday after the treatment, I was just shy of 162 lbs.  This morning, I was back at 146 lbs and feeling my usual self. The bloating of my face and body from a few days ago were gone; the constant nausea - and wanting to throw up but not being able to- was also gone; and the fatigue and the feeling of not wanting to do anything was a distant memory. I woke up and had my usual morning coffee and bagel. I did a 10k step walk around the lagoon with a friend and cleaned out my garage. In many ways, it was just another ordinary day. These are the days that I enjoy the most- the space between my last chemo treatment (and full recovery of it) and th...