Yuck.

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You have dozens of lymph nodes in your body. They are part of the immune system.
They are all interconnected and vital. they kind of "filter" infection from your body.

With most cancers - say liver cancer - if it has advanced to the nodes, it pretty much is a death sentence. The cancer appears randomly in the nodes. They work like a superhighway.

With Hodgkin's, it appears sequentially. From one to the next in line, until they are all infected. It then causes organ failure.

In other words, Hodgkin's in the most treatable form of cancer. Like all cancers, in can reoccur.
 
Update

All my tests are done and I am undergoing chemotherapy.

The disease is in the lymph nodes of my stomach and my lower abdomen. It has not gone any further, just growing quickly where it currently is. This is a good thing as the chemo kills fast growing cells.

Doc says I have the best prognosis among his cancer patients. :hail2:
 
Thanks guys!

Well, Im done with my first cycle of Chemotherapy.

No problems or side effects.

Although I am eligible for long term disability, I'm at work.

Can you imagine that? A federal civil servant that doesn't bail out with the first chance to NOT work? :D

I like my job, and I'm able to do it.

On the home front, I can have a drink rarely. It's killing me not to have a few drinks with the wifey. Also can't go into the hot tub...:bang:
 
Still here

Hey guys!

Been back to work part time since April, and full time since July, not bad considering I finished chemotherapy in early March. But it did beat the crap out of me. At the end I was sleeping about 22 hours a day. Not once did I get sick enough to lose my lunch though. Close, but it didn't happen.

All my hair grew back pretty good. It was weird having no hair at all - even the eyelashes were gone. The worst affected was my feet. All the skin came off the bottom of my feet and it was hell just walking. Lost all my toenails too, but 6 of them have come back so far. I have some nerve damage to my fingertips. Apart from tiring easily, I'm OK.
:nice:

The finally tally:

3 surgeries
12 bi-weekly infusions of Chemo (ABVD)
1 bone marrow tap
74 injections [1 a day for 6 days after each chemo session] in the stomach of Neupogen (to increase my white cell count)
2 PET scans in Montreal
4 MRIs
4 CT scans
3 emergency room visits
34 blood tests

Family and friends were just awesome through the whole ordeal.

I did a bunch of tests in December, and the results came back in January. Oncologist said that the results were so clean, it looked like I never even had cancer - no scarring, calcification - nothing at all. It looks so good that I no longer have to do any scans, just a blood test every 6 months.
:hail2:
 
That's great to hear man. Its unreal how sometimes the cure is nearly as bad as the ailment. Kinda fighting poision, with more poisone. :(

It awesome that you're through it now though. Did you lose a lot of weight?
 
That's great to hear man. Its unreal how sometimes the cure is nearly as bad as the ailment. Kinda fighting poision, with more poisone. :(

It awesome that you're through it now though. Did you lose a lot of weight?

Didn't lose any weight at all. Face got fat for a while. The chemo was tough on a guy my age, especially since this cancer mostly affects people under 35. So, I got loaded up as if I was a 30 year old. Halfway through my chemo, tests showed the cancer was gone. The Doc wanted to ease up on the chemo as it was having a terrible effect on my feet, but I told him to " Hit the sucker hard". Probably a good thing, but it has caused some damage.

Keasbey - thanks for looking in on me. I was in Montreal at the Hotel Dieu hospital for PET scans. I found out that Saku Koivu bought the entire scanning equipment ($1 million bucks!) as a donation to the hospital. Good hockey player and a great person!

One of life's experiences - not a good one, but my philosophy is that everything you do, and what happens to you, makes you who you are - and if I could, I still wouldn't change a thing.