I’ll start by posting here myself, hopefully more posts and interaction will draw more people jere so we can start to build a supportive community.
I’m in my late 20s diagnosed about a year ago with Hodgkins lymphoma. I did six cycles of abvd, midway scan looked great, end of treatment scan however, not so much. One tiny spot in my chest still lit up (deauville 5) so back to the hospital. Normal course of action would be more chemo followed by an auto stemcell transplant, however, as tge scan only showed evidence of cancer in one location my hematologist suggested trying radiation therapy first. I’ve currently finished 18 days of radiation and I’m awaiting another pet scan (next week) to see if the radiation put me into remission or if I’m going back into treatment for more chemo and an auto transplant.
I’d love to hear from other people, whether your situation is good or bad. Or if you just want to vent or post about (funny) situations at the hospital, almost anything goes.
I’ve personally found humor to be a great way to deal with everything.
Hodgkin’s is a type of lymphoma, basically a blood cancer that manifests itself in lymph nodes, can be anywhere in your body or in your bone marrow as well.
Normally you might do both chemo and radiation on a large area as treatment, as lymphomas usualy respond very well to radiation, but initially my hematologist decided against radiation as some of the tumors were located close to my heart, so we did 6 rounds of chemo instead of 4 followed by radiation.
But then my cancer decided to stick around till after the chemo, and a para-sternal lymphnode still lit up at the after treatment scan (a lymphnode next to the sternum between the lung and the ribs), so they radiated a small area basically around where that lymph node was.