Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Cancer Lite and Mr. Murphy

Here's what I got: a recurrent form of Hodgkin's disease. Now, many of you cancer-heads out there are probably thinking, "Oh, well, you have cancer-lite". And you used to be right. Hodgkin's is a very curable form of cancer. If caught early and the situation is right, people have something like a 90% chance of complete remission. I wasn't one of the 90%. I hate crowds.

That means I get switched to the "Recurrent Hodgkin's" file. Not so nice. To get a cure here, the odds are much lower and you have to do the nasty with something called Stem Cell Transplantation.

The other response from peoples is, "Ah, what's Hodgkin's?" It's cancer of the lymph nodes. Usually, that doesn't provide any more insight. And I understand since I had the same reaction when I first heard about it. Imagine being told you have cancer of something you don't really know about. My biology professor, Mr. Murphy, was a good teacher. But come on. You're going to interest a high school kid on the many functions of a lymph node? I was busy with spit balls. 

Without a quick referral to the world's formost expert on everything, Wikipedia, lymph nodes are all over our body and help us fight colds. Mine are fucked up. Even the first try at chemo couldn't make them better for more than a couple of months. 

During my first run-through I read all the stuff I could get my hands on. But there wasn't much about people with recurrent diseases. I was wondering if that's because they're all dead. Or are they too vegged-out to type anymore?


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