The Lord of the Cancer: The Fellowship of lymphoma

So I kinda named my whole trial with my disease after the Lord of the rings because honestly it totally reminds me of that movie series.  I remember when the fellowship of the rings came out and I was like, "This is one long ass freakin movie!  Frodo's not in Mordor yet and it's already hitting the 3 hour mark!!"  That's when I realized it was a trilogy.   That's how I can best describe this bullshit I'm going through, because it's long as hell, and it feels like there's no end in sight.

As I lay in the hospital bed listening to the oncology service team headed by Dr. Michaelis, explain to me what Diffuse large b-cell non-hodgkin's lymphoma is, the only thing going in my head was, "Damn, I have mother fucking cancer.  What the hell happened to me?"  I had so many unanswered questions,  "Was I going to die?  How much is my life insurance?  Fuucck, why didn't I increase it to the max when I was going through orientation 3 years ago??!!  Hmmm...Oh well, Lidia and Daniela are gonna be so rich when I die.  Shit...She's gonna find and marry a Puerto Rican like Miguel Cotto!  He's a lot better looking than my fat cancerous ass.  Wait a minute!  This asshole's gonna take all my money!!  If he does, I'm gonna haunt the living crap out of him."  These were the few of many questions/statements racing in my head as I found out my diagnosis.

First PET scan taken in February 2011.  Anything dark colored is highly metabolic.  Cancer is highly metabolic.  The dark spot on top is my brain and the dark spot on the bottom is my bladder, don't mind those.  But look at the whole shebang!

Basically, Non-hodgkin's lymphoma is recently of the past 10 years one of the most common cancers out there.  Unfortunately there's a bunch of subtypes of NHL.  Mine was Diffuse large B-cell meaning it only affected the B-cell lymphocytes.  For those not familiar with the body systems, B-cells and T-cells are part of your immune system that fight off infections and viruses.  Maybe when I'm feeling better I can get more in depth on how exactly b cell lymphoma attacks your body.  Nah, I'm just lazy right now. :)  So anyways, when I had my CT and PET scans, i had multiple tumors all over my body.  I had one in my throat, a HUGE ass 10x17cm tumor in my chest cavity, and 2 tumors on my adrenal glands.  To also include, I had pleural effusion in both lungs meaning the outer layer of the lungs had fluid in it, and pericardial effusion, the same goes for the heart.  I was to immediately start R-CHOP chemotherapy.  R-CHOP stood for Rituxan, Cytoxan, Vincristine, Doxorubicin (my favorite because it's called the red death), and Prednisone.  Have no idea where the H and O come from but I guess R-CHOP sounds better than R-CVDP.

I honestly had NOOOO idea what to expect.  You never really pay too much attention to cancer unless you have it or personally know someone very close who's fought it.  I've had some family friends go through it but seeing how they recover, I thought it wasn't so bad at first.  I thought to myself, "Hmmm, this isn't so bad, I don't feel that sick."  Who was I kidding, this stuff was like gang rape in prison led by your prison roommate Leroy.  What people usually don't see is the struggle they go through after chemo.  Especially after the neulasta/neupogen shots to increase white blood cell production.  How I see it is at the cancer center, you see us sitting in those nice chairs hooked up to IV bags of chemo, and a couple hours later we walk out like everything's all good.  Then after a few more hours when the stuff is really in your system, Boom!  You get hit hard with a truck.  You feel like shit,  I don't know how to describe it but it's a very yucky feeling, my face was like rubber, I'd try to smile but it looks like I just had a stroke.  I was very fortunate to not have the nausea, vomiting, and not a lot of diarrhea.  But boy did I have the rest of the symptoms.  Especially from the Vincristine.  That drug gives off Peripheral Neuropathy, which is absolute complete numbness of your hands and feet.  I begged my oncologist to take it off but he looked at me like I was high on coke as he explained to me the importance of combo chemo drugs.  But the feeling of my hands and feet gone drove me crazy.  To make it worse, the numbness lasts....for months even years...and as I type this I have to delete a lot of things or else my blog would look like this.  I haveeer cancerr.  Gets annoying after awhile.  It also sounds like what Carlos Mencia makes fun of all the time.  Which I don't want to offend anyone cuz I think I may have upset someone in the past who put a curse on me.  So whoever it was....I forgive you and I'm sorry......but please lift this damn curse off me!!!! ;)  

PET scan in June 2011...Looked pretty good!

Anyways, back to after chemo, I try to keep my struggle to myself.  I don't want people seeing me have difficulty moving around, because they would automatically feel sorry for me.  I didn't want anyone to feel sorry for me because I knew if I kept going and trucking, I was gonna beat this(foreshadowing.)  But there were times I would be really weak and some people would see me break down.  Especially Lidia, and it hurt me so much to have her witness me break down and show her I cant do this because I know how much she's been having to deal with everything and everyone knowing she JUST had a baby.  To deal with all the fatigue, weakness, and pain, I'd just lie down and sleep.  All the physical therapists and MDs keep telling me to move around, exercise, it'll make the pain go down, I say hell no, I'm just gonna go to sleep.  You tell me how it's like to have pain on your ass, hips, and legs at the same time.  This would honestly last for one week.  My first cycle was all done in the hospital, because I had to get my PICC line inserted, then they had to monitor me for a couple days.  But the other cycles were done out-patient and done in  just one day.  The cycles were every 21 days.  After the 2nd cycle, I felt a lot of relief from my chest and throat, and I thought I was cured by the 3rd round.  But I had to complete 6 cycles of chemo.  So I went from March to June 2011 without working while going through the intense chemo regime.  It was a long long process  and I had another PET to see where I was after chemo.  Low and behold, all the tumors were gone, my neck, the adrenals, and the just a small small smidge left in my chest.  So what was next?  I needed radiation.  I felt like the finish line was in reach...I had HOPE.......  

For those dealing with cancer or taking care of someone with cancer, I have some advice...It's not happy good advice.  It's real advice from someone that's gone through the gauntlet a little too much.  Hope is a double edged sword...just like our freaking Bulls...If I think I'm cursed with cancer, the whole city of chicago sports is cursed.  Damn Rose, Noah, Cutler, Cubs you blow...Why do I keep going off topic?  I must be tired...Anyways, a lot of people have been texting me about advice for someone they know that has what I have or another form of cancer.  And there's a lot of you, and I saw thank you for letting me into your private lives and helping you with the healing process, but my main advice is, hope is both a good and bad thing.  Don't hope so much that this will be a quick cure.  Everyone is different, some people go through a couple cycles and are good.  Some take years, some like me get the whole freaking kitchen sink thrown at them.  But it is all a struggle, struggle to survive, struggle to live a normal life.  Most of the time, the person going through it will not let you know how much they are struggling.  Dealing with someone who has cancer is an art form.  When to back off, when to listen, when to help, when to become emotional.  Its hard to juggle all of that and having someone you care for be really sick.  It's difficult for the person going through it all having a massive influx of people concerned can also be really overwhelming at first.  But then again, some people will take it differently, I'm completely basing all this on my own experiences.  This is weird talking about all this stuff that's already happened to me in the past year.  It's like an episode of Lost, when they fuse past, present, and future into one episode.  It's like me writing all this, I'm trying to write about the past, but get stuck in the present and will write about the future...seriously there needs to be a movie about my life.  If this was LOTR, right now, this would be the end of the fellowship.  And I think that's all I can write for now.  Thanks for taking time to read this and understand just a small part of what I and others have to go through.      

Me after the biopsy 2/2011.  Always trying to stay positive when the world is crashing down.