I remember it so clearly. My biopsy was done and I went back to the Oncologist to discuss the results. My husband came with me. It was strange because I got to wait in his office until he was ready for me, and they gave me something to drink. I really felt like I was getting the VIP treatment, probably because I was a doctor.
He told me it was Nodular Poorly Differentiated Lymphoma (I think now it's called b cell or small cell, they change the names every few years just to keep everyone on their toes). It is very slow growing, but very hard to get rid of.
The thing is that the faster gowing your tumor is, the easier it is to treat because most treatments attack the fast growing cells. This is why your bone marrow gets depleted and your hair falls out, because these cells are growing faster than other areas of your body. Since my tumor cells are growing slowly, the treatments can get some of them, but not all, which makes this kind of cancer INCURABLE. I can live without much problem for 5-7 years, but treatments will have to get more aggresive with less results as time goes on. He told me that if I were 65 (much more common in older people) than he would know what to tell me--treat any symptoms and if no symptoms just watch and wait. Since I was 27, he decided he would talk to his collegues across the country and find out what they thought and get back to me.
Problem: Besides being young and newly married (4 years), we wanted children. I really felt like I didn't want this disease to change my life any more than it had to. I wanted to stay in Residency, work as a doctor, and have children, especially if I had a few good years left. I wanted to leave some part of me behind for myself and for my husband. The doc said the lymphoma would be no problem to having children, but I should think about having them sooner rather than later, since you never know when I might need chemo and some chemo makes you infertile, plus I wouldn't want to have chemo during the early part of pregnancy.
As we were leaving the doctor's office, I remember seeing one of my fellow residents who was working at the doctor's office for one of his rotations.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"Well, I have cancer," I told him and broke down crying. I never thought that word would be associated with me. Suddenly I was measuring my life in small amounts of years, not decades, grandchildren, retirement, etc. Really strange. You really want to deny it all, hope it was a bad dream and wake up and be healthy, etc.
