Here's What The Oncologist Said...

So I was "excited" (perhaps eager is a better word) for my Oncologist visit. Matthew came with me, and while in the waiting room we distracted ourselves with Divorce Court (she's fierce!) and Family Feud. The doctor confirmed it was Hodgkins Lymphoma, though staging can't be determined until I undergo a number of tests. Here's a breakdown of what we found out that day.

Staging: Though unknown, just looking at me it looks like it's "Stage 2A Bulky". "Stage 2" means it's in multiple spots above my diaphram. "A" means I'm not showing symptoms like fever, sweats, or weight loss (not that I have any weight to lose). And "bulky" (which makes me feel fat... then again, I have no weight to lose) just means that my tumor is extra large, and so I'll get a radiation cycle after my chemo treatment.

Schedule: My chemo comes in 2 treatments per cycle. I get a treatment every 2 weeks, so 1 cycle is 4 weeks. I will start will start with 4 cycles of chemo (16 weeks). Then I'll have a PET scan (a fancy CT scan) to see the progress. If, like the groundhog, I still see the shadow, then I get 2 more cycles (8 weeks) of chemo (aka more weeks of winter). If not, then I'll begin the radiation treatment for a month, and be done! So I'm looking at anywhere between 20 weeks and 28 weeks. I'm scheduled to start my first treatment on Friday, January 15.

Type of Chemo: I'm getting the standard ABVD chemo. See the wikipedia article on it for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABVD . My chances of hair loss are 95%. More on this later.

To Do List Before Chemo Starts:

1) Get a bone scan (scheduled for Monday, Jan 11)

2) Get a bone marrow specimen (scheduled for Tuesday, January 12)

3) Have a port installed in my chest where the chemo will be administered (scheduled for Weds, January 13)

4) Get a PET scan (scheduled for Thursday, January 14)

5&6) Get lung and heart tests. These will most likely be done after my first chemo treatment on Friday, January 15th because we just don't have time to squeeze them in before.

So it's going to be a busy week. Planning everything with the doctor and scheduling all the appointments was extremely overwhelming for me. It's not that it suddenly hit me that I had cancer, but rather that it was really starting to control my day to day life. Hopefully after this next week I can fall into a routine schedule that still allows me to maintain some structure of a normal life.