So the bad news is I have Cancer. The good news is that it’s Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which is apparently 80-90% curable.
I went to my surgeon’s office last Tuesday to hear the results of my biopsy and that is what they were. I think I was actually relieved when I heard that it was Hodgkin’s. I was worried that it was going to be non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which is not nearly as cowardly a disease.
Anyway, I got an appointment to see Dr. Stephen Petersdorf on last Friday, which I did. We talked for a while and he did a physical exam and drew some blood. He said that in the physical exam he couldn’t find any obviously enlarged lymph nodes except the ones on my neck and possibly some under my right armpit. Based on this and my lack of symptoms, his "hunch" was that I was in an early (I or II) stage of the disease, which would be good.
I’m supposed to get a call today about scheduling a CT scan and a PET scan to get the "real" staging information.
They drew some blood and I got the results from that: it looked "very good". My blood counts (white cells, hemoglobin, platelets) were normal. My ESR was 2, which is apparently well within the normal range. And my LHD was normal, which is good. The doctor said my liver function npanel (ALT and alkine phosphatase were mildly elevanted), but only about where they were elevated in 11/04. The doctor doesn’t think the liver results have anything to do with Hodgkin’s disease since it’s rare for it to directly involve the liver, but we’ll know more after the CT and PET scans.
After the CT and PET scans, I’ll likely move on to a few months of chemotherapy and some radiation treatments. The doctor said that if it was early that I’d do about 3-4 months of chemo and 1 month of radiation, so that’s what I’ll aim for.