Our Big Adventure

On the 21st of January, mine and Christy's big adventure included another challenge. The nice doctor that I had been seeing regarding my enlarged lymph node behind my left collar bone informed us that I will be recovering from Nodular Sclerosis Hodgkins Lymphoma. Although we knew a tumor was a possible report of my biopsy surgery we were still expecting something different especially since the symptoms seemed to respond to a round of antibiotics around Christmas and the area has been pressure sensitive from the beginning.

Some backstory:
As Christy and I were about to leave for a friend's house I noticed that my neck was sore and started rubbing it saying, "Why do I have a sore muscle here? Wait! There's no muscle here! What's behind the collar bone?!". Thankfully Google knows what's behind the collar bone and told us that it was most likely a lymph node. It also told us that the human body has between 500 and 600 lymph nodes! This was news to us indeed.

Once I got to see a doctor about it he appeared a bit alarmed because no other lymph nodes on my body were inflamed. He was quick to refer me to the Ear Nose Throat doctor at Mercy Hospital. I was able to get an appointment for the day before Christy and I drove to Connecticut for family Christmas on her side. The proximity to Christmas was a blessing from God because the kind doctor was able to see me, get blood work done, perform a needle core test and have a CAT Scan performed all in one long day at the hospital with the results emailed to me 4 days later.  When the results of all this came in we still did not know what was going on with the left side of my neck, but we found that there were 2 masses showing on the CAT Scan. See? That's what I look like on the inside!

Two weeks later I met with the ENT doctor for some brief paperwork and showed up the following day for a surgery to remove a 1CM cubed piece of the top mass and perform a biopsy on it. I must say, anesthesia is bizarre. Brother-in-law Nathan was kind enough to transport me for the process and sat through the entire thing with the reward of seeing me come out of very confused land. As far as procedures go, this brings us up to last Monday when we heard the results of biopsy and were immediately surrounded by countless kind family and friends and their prayers.

Last Friday I had 2 more CAT Scans done in hopes of determining where the cancer started and where it plans on trying to spread. We have an appointment this coming Thursday to hear the results of the CAT Scan and will most likely know the stage of the cancer. The following Monday we will have our first meeting with the oncologist to start planning our attack. We're a bit fearful of the results and I know I'm a bit fearful of the process, but we really couldn't be in a better situation with such a fantastic support network around us.

We'll be looking back soon saying to ourselves, "remember when we kicked cancer?"