8 Years

On Sunday July 22nd it was my anniversary for 8 years of remission from Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I was diagnosed in the early part of February 1999. I had just turned 24 less then a month before and I had now clue. Today 8 1/2 years later from diagnosis I am living proof that even in the worst case scenarios there is still hope.

When I was first diagnosed I was in stage 4 cancer with a tumor the size in my chest the size of a basketball. It was attached to my lung and possibly my heart. I remember the weeks leading up to it very well. I don't remember the 3 weeks after I was diagnosed. I remember Melissa moving here (finally) right before my birthday. I remember not feeling right for a very long time. I was working for my father and I was working in an environment that was not the best. I was working at his and my step mother's flower stand in South Station, right in front of the doors. The problem with this was that you'd be warm for 5 minutes and then the doors would open and it would be cold, how does your body acclimate to those conditions. I was setting up the stand and breaking it down 6 days a week. I was always on time and I always worked hard, of course if you ask my father I never worked enough. I worked 10-12 hour days and I was strong, and skinny. But then I started to get tired a lot, and I started to have problems with getting there on time and just not feeling good. This started a few months before in the end of fall beginning of winter. I remember calling my mom and saying, I just don't have energy anymore, I just feel blah all the time, you know me I am never late and now I can't seem to just get up.

Don't get me wrong I was 23 and I was going out, but you know around October of 1998 I stopped going out as much as I used to, I just didn't feel that great. Sure I still went out, but people would say, "want to go hang out tonight?" and I'd reply, "nah I'm not feeling well." But there wasn't anything specific wrong with me.

Now I realize the tumor was starting to form and it grew so fast. By January of 1999 I was having problems breathing and I was getting skinnier and skinnier, I remember at one point I could actually see my heart beating through my chest, the skin was beating, that was because the tumor had pushed up my heart. Now you would think at this point I would've thought this isn't right, but NO! not me, I said to Melissa, "look at this, isn't that cool?" I know I know WARNING WARNING that is not normal, but what 23 year old thinks something is wrong. But then I started to cough, and I started having trouble breathing. I remember saying to people "I can't breathe out of my left lung and I feel something in my chest, like if I could reach down and grab it and pull it out." I would try to cough it up thinking it was flem. One day it was cold out and I had gone to the store and when I climbed the steps up to my apartment I just about collapsed, I couldn't breathe and the lack of oxygen with the cold outside pretty much almost made me black out.

I remember going to the doctors, a couple of times when the cough started. She thought I had bronchitis which made sense I usually got bronchitis around the winter time, so my doctor gave me a prescription and told me to rest.

Oh I forgot that right around the new year my father and I had another blow out and he fired me, because I was lazy and I didn't want to work. So, now I'm out of a job and I'm not feeling right. The antibiotics are doing nothing and the cough is getting worse and I'm still not breathing well. I go back to the doctor and she says I sound like I have asthmatic bronchitis, she gives me cough syrup with codeine but still it doesn't help.

This part I only recently remembered, like a passing thought, I took a taxi somewhere because it was cold and I think snowing, I was having a hard time breathing and the cough was just horrible by this point. I'm sitting in the back hacking up a lung and the cabbie asks me if I'm okay. I said to him, "Yes I just have asthmatic bronchitis thank you."

He says, "be careful I had bronchitis and it turned into pneumonia, you should get an x-ray because it may be that."

I told the cabbie, "you know I didn't think of that, thanks, if it doesn't get better in the next day or two I will go."

I think that was a Monday or Tuesday, on Wednesday night I coughed all night and actually kept poor Melissa up as well, then I made a decision on Thursday morning to go to the hospital that night after my bar tending class. (I was going to school to get certified). I asked Melissa if she would go with me and she said, of course, I called my friend Wayne to see if he would pick us up from St. Elizabeth's that night. He said he would.

I go to class and meet Melissa at the T and we head over to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, I check in (thank god I still had COBRA from my old job at the law firm it was a stipulation I had when I agreed to work for my father). I tell the triage nurse what is going on and that I had been to the doctor but just wanted to get a chest x-ray to make sure everything was okay.

We wait and I finally go in for the X-ray, I go back to the waiting room and we wait and wait, Wayne finally comes and we tell him that I still have not seen the doctor so him being the great guy that he was, he runs out and gets us some Burger King. Finally the doctors are ready to talk to me. I go in the back and they say to me, "we see a mass on your chest, it is probably something that you have had your whole life but we want to admit you so we can run further tests and take a CT scan."

I remember asking them all kinds of questions, but I don't remember them saying much to me, I know they never used the word cancer. I go back out to Melissa and Wayne and tell them what they said, I say to Melissa I should probably call my father, and let him know, but we weren't talking so I called my step mother Jayne. I told her where I was and why and what the doctors said. At this point it is like 9pm I have to wait for a bed. I call my mom collect (oh this is all before I had a cellphone good ol' pay phones) but she wasn't home so I try her friend Penny. I tell Penny what is going on and she says she will let my mom know. At this point I am still very calm we are laughing and not thinking CANCER, at least none of us wanted to say it. About an hour later in walks my father, we were sitting playing cards or something and he says, "hi" I said, hi back now we hadn't spoken in about a month. He asks what is going on and I tell him. He has this look on his face, neither one of us says much. They find a bed for me and I get myself all set up, Melissa offered to stay with me but I tell her its okay just go home and get me some stuff for the next day.

Friday I don't remember anything, from what people tell me, early Friday morning they take me down for a CT scan and immediately after the scan they rush me into the OR because my left lung was collapsed and filling with fluid and my heart was so engorged from fluids that if they didn't drain it my heart would have probably imploded or my lung would've drown me. At that point they take a biopsy and I find out I have stage 4 Non-Hodgkins lymphoma with about a 15% chance of survival.

Come to find out if I hadn't gone to the hospital when I did I probably wouldn't have made the weekend, because like I said my heart would have imploded or my lung would have caused me to drown, you know I think back and realize that cab driver saved my life, tell me that wasn't my guardian angel, and my human angel was Melissa, she came to live here about 3 weeks before I was diagnosed I truely believe that someone above sent her to me when I needed her the most, because she was there through it all she took such good care of me. I will write about all that soon enough I promise. Thanks again Melissa

My mom flies out from Phoenix and decisions need to be made. I was in the ICU for a short while after surgery and I guess the doctors told my family that even if they tried chemotherapy it might not work because if the tumor is attached to my heart, the chemo could shrink the tumor but that might make the tumor tear my heart. Not a good thing to tell my mom at that moment. What to do, luckily my primary doctor came and found the best doctor EVER. We decided to transfer to Brigham Women's & The Dana Farber Cancer Institute, I meet with my new doctor David C. Fisher, and what a difference he was. I remember him saying, "this is going to be hard and if you are willing to fight I think we will be able to help you." I went from doctors telling me that I probably wouldn't make it, to a doctor telling me he has hope.

My prognosis was still not good but he gave us hope, I still had only a small chance of survival but we were going to do everything there was to do. My treatment was layed out for me, 6 sessions of CHOP chemotherapy if that didn't work then we'd try a Autologous Stem Cell/Bone Marrow Transplant (AutoSCT) (please do not make nasty comments about stem cell transplants here, my own stem cells and bone marrow were used not an embryonic stem cell transplant this is not the place you can leave an opinion I don't mind). Then we would do a months worth of radiation. And that's exactly what I did, it was probably the hardest time in my life and hardest situation I have ever been in, but you know what I am a fighter and I truly believe that 80% is mental and 20% is medicine... well to a point, if you do not fight and want to live then the medicine cannot do their jobs. I also have to say that I am a very lucky person, my friends and family rallied around me and were there. I met some great people out of this and am thankful everyday.

This past Sunday we celebrated 8 years of remission, my mom and Melissa threw me a luau and it was so much fun. I will post about that next (this is long enough). Here is a picture of me right before I went in for my stem cell/bone marrow transplant. This is a picture of me and Steve at the hospital.