The One about the Diagnosis and Backstory

Hi everyone :)

This whole thing has been pretty surreal. People talk about how teenagers think they're invincible, and until a couple ago I definitely thought I was. And as hard as you would expect this to be, I'm excited to have you all in on this process.

This past April, around Easter, I noticed two enlarged lymph nodes really near my collar bone on the right side of my neck. After they stayed for a couple days, I began to assume I had mono as two of my best friends had earlier that semester. I showed my mom who set up an appointment at the Holy Family Walk-in Clinic in Manitowoc. The PA there told me that I either had p(somethingsomething) rosea (a weird rash thing) or mono, but if nothing showed up in three weeks to come back in, and they would check me for something worse like lymphoma.

Woah. Didn't like the sound of that. She assured me that in her ten years practicing she had never diagnosed someone with lymphoma, and that I shouldn't worry about it. But of course I did.

I got back to school and told my three best friends and roommates that this was a possibility. They were all great and assured me that it was probably nothing, the statistics were on my side. My boyfriend Henry and my family said they same thing. So I tried not to think about it. And, failing that, tried not to compare the symptoms I had found on Mayo Clinic to what was going on with me.

I got really sick late April with a bad cough, fatigue, and nausea (sorry again to everyone in Bergstrom that I woke up with my cough). This lasted about ten days. Special shout out to Mary Holz who brought me hot tea and kept me company through it all :) I went to the doctor four times - three times at school and once in Manitowoc (thanks for getting me there Molly) - and each time I was tested for mono, strep, or any of the regular infections. Nothing. Finally I got some medicine that made the cough better. But the lymph nodes did not go down.

When I got back home, my ENT prescribed three weeks worth of antibiotics and ibuprofen to try to get them to go down. Nothing. We called again and when I went in to visit Dr. Butler on Wednesday, June 3rd, she took about 15 seconds to tell me that my lymph nodes were "large, firm, and in a bad place. We're going to have to biopsy."

The very next day I was in the hospital for a CT scan, chest X-ray, and blood tests for a bunch of really weird but better than cancer diseases. When we had our follow-up we found out that each came out negative, but the chest x-ray had shown that lymph nodes I couldn't even feel were taking up too much room under my sternum, and the ones on my neck were larger and more in number.

The biopsy two days later (last Thursday) confirmed that I do have lymphoma - most likely Hodgkin's Disease. This week I'll have a PET scan and my first meeting with my oncologist, which will most likely be followed by a bone marrow biopsy (just as fun as it sounds).

Current symptoms, side effects, and complaints: fatigue and not much of an appetite

If you need to talk, feel free to text, email, FB message, etc. Otherwise reading comments are fun!