Step One: "So You Have Cancer..."

So you have cancer. 

Or someone you know has cancer. Or someone you know knows someone who has cancer. We live in a world where cancer is just as prevalent as the zodiac sign those weird hippies rave about. 

The coldest, hardest fact any person in the medical community can give you is that there is a very big chance that you or someone you know or someone you know who knows someone will get cancer. For some of you, it’ll be an avoidable cancer; if you keep smoking those cigarettes you are so addicted to, you’ll stand a good chance of developing lung cancer. For others, it’s a genetic monstrosity waiting to come up later; all you ladies out there who had a grandmother die of breast cancer? Guess what? You’ll probably get it.

And then there’s the worst type- out of the blue. No warning signs, no genetic factors, no environmental factors. It just… happens. 

This is where I come in. 

Who am I? I’m just a 27 year old woman who, quite frankly, was one day at work- you know,  working a super non-important job in a grocery store and forever reaching for that next big promotion- and the very next day, I’m at the hospital being told they’re fairly certain I have cancer. 

Like I said: no warning signs, no genetics. It came on as fast as (spoiler alert) Thanos snapped his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War. Maybe I should retroactively name the now-dead tumor in my body Thanos. My husband will get a kick out of that.

The cancer I was diagnosed with has a long name- diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. If you want to get even more specific, I’m sub-categorized as having “bulky disorder”, meaning that Thanos was 25 centimeters long when I found it. 

Yeah, okay, but what does that even mean?

I’m going to get specific and break down exactly what my cancer is. In the shortest possible way of saying what it is without going overboard on medical terminology, because let’s face it; you’re probably not going to understand it- I mean, I don’t and I had the damn thing, it’s a blood cancer. Its cousins are leukemia and myeloma. 

There are two types of lymphoma: Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s. Jesus, typing that out made it feel like I’m in a high school teen drama film: “We’re the popular ones- and you’re the not-popular ones.” There is a difference between the two; Hodgkin’s have Reed-Sternberg cells on the affected lymphocyte and non-Hodgkin’s- well, it does not. I actually had to look that up, since I only have the non-Hodgkin’s variety (thanks, Mayo Clinic website!).

I think I lost some of you. Let’s go back a little. 

Alright, so your body has these special white blood cells called lymphocytes. In lymphoma, those cells become cancerous. If the cell has that weirdly named cell above on it, you’re one of the popular kids in high school- wait, I mean you’ve got Hodgkin’s lymphoma. If not, you’re non-Hodgkin’s. There, I can’t make that anymore simpler. I can’t, but someone else probably can. Give me a shout if you can.

 

Now then… My cancer. 

Because, after all, I’m the author, and of course, this has to be all about me. So if you read the name of my cancer again, it mentions “B-cell”. That in of itself describes which lymphocyte was cancerous. For me, it’s B-cells. For someone else, it might be T-cells. You probably have heard of T-cells before because in health class in high school, they talked about HIV and all that good stuff. Well, HIV lowers T-cells and you get AIDS. …Let’s stop talking about HIV and AIDS. This story is about cancer after all!

So how did I come across getting cancer? What’s my big, soulful story on how I went from being normal to being a survivor? There isn’t one. I’m sorry. I know, it’s such a let-down, right? The entire thing could be summed up in three bullet points. No, really; it can. Let’s try it.

The Cancer Story

• ·       I’m at work being normal- well, as normal as I can really be; to be honest, I'm actually a really weird person. I make customers laugh, I am a cocky asshole who doesn’t get along with a lot of my coworkers. I treat my husband, who I had married on October 31st of 2016, less than optimally.

• ·       April 20^th, 2017: I get home from work. I undress to shower. I see a weird bulge. Like any sane individual, I go to WebMD and self-diagnose with CANCER!!- Nah, I’m kidding; I consult my (registered nurse) best friend in Georgia who tells me the obvious “go to the hospital” advice.

• ·       I go to the hospital and I go home with an ultrasound appointment. The ultrasound shows no hernia, which is what we all thought Thanos was, but shows that Thanos is actually some swollen lymph nodes, which is where lymphoma tumors show up. An appointment there, a biopsy here, lots of impatient waiting all over: I’m diagnosed with cancer.

Told you so. It’s as eventful as that. Well, on paper. For me, it was a shit-show of a time. You know how some people say, “one day you’ll look back on this and laugh”? That really doesn’t apply here. And it probably never will. I mean, if you had your life turned upside down in a day (or month), you probably won't go back and laugh about it. 

A Brief Word About This Blog

You’ll notice I throw a lot of humor into my writing- please, for the love of all that is holy and Thanos, do not mistake that for me taking such a serious subject lightly. I’ve always been an entertainer- hell, even in the absolute throws of cancer and chemo and no hair and pain and depression, I’ve always responded to “how are you?” in the best way I know: 

“My body is trying to die, but the doctors won’t let it!” 

Cue the horrified, gaping jaw-drops and half-hearted snickers. Without my sense of humor, I could not have gotten through Thanos trying to literally kill me. Without my husband, I probably would not have come out of it so adjusted that I can still laugh- and sing. For many days during the cancer and its treatments… I’ve questioned whether I could come out of it to laugh or sing again.

And so I pepper my writing with my own version of what I think is funny (because everyone’s a comedian, right?!) with one goal in mind: despite what cancer had thrown at me, despite how hard it all got, despite how messed up it all became very fast… I still laugh- and sing.

The purpose of this blog is two-fold: it is therapy for me, and a source of weirdly specific knowledge about me and my cancer and how I handled things. One thing that I noticed in all seriousness is there is a lack of resources out there for young adult cancer patients- lymphoma being one of those. So grab a chair, a cool drink of iced tea (or not, it's your call), and let's all say the mantra out loud. 

Here, I'll go first:

"My name is Erika, and I'm a lymphomaniac".

I dedicate this blog to all of my kindred spirits either fighting cancer or supporting those who have cancer. You will never know who I am on a personal level (well, depending on how personal I get when I write), but know that I am with you in spirit.