Diagnostic Update

I don't want to beat lymphoma to death because I've already vowed that I don't want to turn into a professional cancer patient. I want to remain me, and if I happen to write about lymphoma now and then, well, that's fine, but I don't want to make a career out of it.

We still don't know what exact form my lymphoma has taken. I have to go in and have a node surgically removed for microscopic examination, I need to have a bone marrow biopsy (ick) and I need to have a PET scan. That will allow them to determine the nature and extent of my disease, at which time they select the appropriate chemotherapy drugs from their amamentarium and let me have it with both barrels.

I'll likely have six months of chemo, with a five-days-on, 25-days-off schedule. I expect this to be a fairly unpleasant ordeal, but my oncologist seems reasonably certain that the results will be good. He believes I have an aggressive, fast-growing form that also succumbs to chemotherapy quite well, as opposed to slower-growing, almost-benign forms that can't be killed.

It can't start too soon. My leg is really becoming a problem and the nodes in my neck and head are starting to ache, though as Jean pointed out, maybe I just have a huge stress headache.