The Meme
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October 24th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
?
I don’t want to pry but what kind of cancer did you beat? Will did not know and I think its wonderful that you beat it.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Re: ?
I had Hodgink’s Lymphoma stage 4. I am very open with my story. In fact, as a part of the Exceptional Child class in college, I went in each semester and told it. My story begins in the fall of 99. I was in gym class the first semester. I was never athletic, but I could do decent during gym. During warm ups in the gym, I couldn’t keep up. I was having trouble breathing. Then at home, it got to the point where I couldn’t go up the stairs without getting out of breath. I was 16, lived in the house since I was 5. I could always do the stairs without a problem. So we went to the doctor and he told me it was exercise induced asthma. I used an inhaler and it helped a little. On the day we ran the mile in gym, I used my inhaler 4 times. I walked 3/4 of it. This was not good. I couldn’t even catch my breath with walking. I was scared. This continued on into the winter. In December or so, I started coughing a lot and eventually started coughing up blood. Mom called the nurse. The nurse asked if I had been coughing a lot. Mom said yes. The nurse said my throat was raw from all the coughing. Take cough syrup and the coughing and blood should go away. Sure enough it worked, as long as I took cough syrup every day. Not my idea of fun. So Feb. or so came around and I was sick of the cough syrup so I stopped. The coughing came back, and the blood returned in March.
I was home sick from school on Friday, March 10. Mom always had a rule that if we stayed home from school, we could not leave the house for any reason later on. Mom had a doctor appointment and asked if I wanted to go with. Of course I jumped at the opportunity to get out of the house. While in the room, Mom mentioned my symptoms to the doctor again (same one as before). I will never forget his words. “I’ll do a chest x-ray but I can guarantee it will come out negative.” Chest x-ray was done. Next thing I know we are sitting in his office. They put the x-ray up. There were two large masses. One was the size of a softball near my heart. He thought it was just some bacterial growth. We set up an appointment to see a specialist in a week and a half. If I had any problems at all over the weekend, we were to go to the ER.
Sunday night (March 12) I came home from church and was having some pains breathing. Off to the ER we went. I was admitted. They said that they would do a biopsy first thing Monday morning. Morning came and went, afternoon came and went, evening came. I’m guessing you know that when you have surgery, you have to have an empty stomach. By this point, I had not eaten anything since Sunday night around 5. I was hungry and crabby. They finally get me into the OR. My parents were told shortly before midnight that it was cancer, but I wasn’t told until shortly after when I woke up. On March 15 (my parent’s 20th wedding anniversary) they transferred me to UW-Children’s Hospital in Madison.
There I went through a ton of tests. I was an interesting individual. They would do a test to learn more about something. On that test, it turned out to be nothing, but something else odd would show up. Rinse and repeat many times. I don’t remember actually being able to eat 3 meals a day for over 2 weeks. On March 21 (Dad’s birthday) I went in for surgery to remove the lower lobe of my left lung, do a biopsy on my upper jaw (something weird had shown up on a test and they wanted to make sure the cancer hadn’t spread), and put in a hickman line (permanent IV = no more needles). I was released from the hospital March 28th I think it was. I started an experimental course of chemo. They didn’t want to do radiation on me since they are finding it increases chances of breast cancer, and since I have it in my family already, no need to increase my chances any more. I was on chemo for 7 months. On Oct. 24 I was cancer free. I was not told it at the time, but my chances for survival were 40% if I had aggressive treatment. I give all the credit to God.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Re: ?
Wow thanks for sharing that. Thats a truly amazing story.