Toolbox Tour & I got Married

I know a guy with NHL who got it about 30 years ago. He is in his 80s now and doing fine. He plays a lot of tennis and travels a lot as well.
 
Wow, that's more than a wrench.

Hopefully the treatment is a success and you can get back to "life as usual" in short order
 
swanicyouth said:
I know a guy with NHL who got it about 30 years ago. He is in his 80s now and doing fine. He plays a lot of tennis and travels a lot as well.
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did he use HGH (Human Growth Hormone) I know thats one thinkg they know causes it.

Off he wouldn't got it at 50 kind of. They say it strikes males more than women and usually at age 15-30 and then not until after 55.

I guess less than 1% of cancers are Hodgkins Lymphoma. I haven't read into it much but it sounds like the same thing that helps it spread so fast is the reason it reacts to the chemo so well. My chemo treatment is ABVD. Its not too harsh, just makes me nauseous and worn out a few days after.

The people they have followed for 40 years have an 83% survival rate so Im not too worried.
 
Wow, Vinnie. Such PMA (positive mental attitude).
Best wishes to you and the Mrs.:props:
 
Wow Vinny, don't know where to start dude. Not been on the forums much lately and just found the thread. Was going to congratulate you and then read on to find the other news. Oh wow. :rolleyes:

Keep the faith my man, I can tell you that THAT matters more than anything. My Mother was diagnosed, stage 4 adenocarcinoma of the lung back in early 99. She walked a very close walk with the Lord. Not wanting to do any treatment at first, then just dove in head first. Her thing was though that ONLY if she had the strength to do it would she do it. She drove an hour 1 way for 32 or 33 of her total 36 radiation treatments, BY HERSELF because that is the way she wanted it. Then 6 of 7 chemo's (that was 15 minutes away) she drove herself to and from.

The one thing that she didn't want to do was lose her hair, and if it meant that she would, she was NOT going to take any treatment. She was a hairdresser her entire life. (They raised me owning 3 salons.) But did she lose her hair? No she did not! :) One small spot behind her ear was all that ever fell out. The doctors couldn't explain it.

Fast forward 3+ years and she was cancer free, (for a while). The doctors couldn't explain it. Her oncologist finally came to tell her that they had been lying to her. Not about the cancer, not about it being gone at the time, but about HOW LONG she had in the early days.

This is what he said one day to us:

"Medicine is about what thy have in black and white. As Doctors we all depend on what is in front of use in black and white. Pages and pages of text books, tests, screens and screens of data all in black in white. All of it told us you wouldn't make it 6 weeks at best."

Then he went on to apologize to her (and me) to tell us that in the beginning, when he told her/me that she had 9 months, maybe more with treatment that he wasn't being truthful.

The reason I say this is it is a matter of faith AND medicine. Medicine does it's job and faith surely does it's own job as well. He admitted to us that day that not only was Mom cancer free, but he had no idea how long it would be, and he had learned to put it in God's hands with US. It was strange as he was very emotional that day. When I mentioned it to his charge nurse she of course told me that she couldn't tell me (what was going on) but that HE had just found out someone in his own family had cancer.

I looked at his nurse that day and told her, "It's ok, he's just trying to figure out where Mom has been carrying her mustard seed."

Matthew 17:20
He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

Matthew 13: 31-32
He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

Faith of Mustard seed.

Faith can indeed move mountains, and my Mom ended up 4 years 5 months after her initial diagnosis leaving us. Vinny that doesn't translate to you I know, because there is no cure for what she had, PERIOD. But there IS for you. ;) You have no worries my brother, but to use these days to keep your faith, and grow it stronger. Times like this, are when we are tempered and made stronger.

Take care,

Tony
 
Mike.Phillips@Autogeek said:
Congratulation!

Now take care of her heart and keep her car clean and detailed and you'll do fine!


:dblthumb2:
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Thanks, I try to.



Guess I can update on everything a bit since I am getting back on here again. No offense but I really just don't get all giddy for detailing when theres snow on the ground. Depressing, but the sun's coming out and the mood is striking again, even though it decided to snow again today. Good stress relief and I need it right now.


I finished the 6 month ABVD chemo in February. The part way PET scan showed the cancer was responding well, the final PET scan showed the lymphoma had become resistant to the treatment and gotten slightly worse. They call this "Refractory Hodgkins". It happens to around 10% of people I guess. So immediately they wanted to get me started on salvage chemotherapy. I have three rounds of ICE chemo, then stem cell transplants. Hopefully that does it, the stats I saw showed it has about a 50% success rate. There is another newer chemo regimen they would try next also if this didn't work, after that though it's not cut and dry but hopefully I don't have to go down that road.

I've learned a little about HL, I try not to read into it too much though. The overall 5 year survival rate is in the 90% but for my Stage 4 its in the 60% range. Stage 4 is the least common and most severe. Survival rate for refractory s4 is not something I looked to hard into, the number I found was 10% but from the 90s. HL is very common in 20-34 year olds like myself with 32% of the new cases being in that age group. They estimated there would be just under 10,000 new cases in 2013 which ranks it as the 23rd most/least popular cancer. For comparison, Prostate and Breast are the two most common and will have nearly 250,000 new cases each per year.

I already did my first round of ICE last week. Its a three day stay in the hospital so it's plenty boring, but could be worse. The side effects haven't been too bad but are worse than the last one.

They usually do three weeks apart on treatments but they gave me Filgrastim injections to boost my WBC count and they hope to do it next week if everything is good.


Can't thank everyone enough for the support so far, its helped a lot.

Thanks.
 
Keep your spirits up and I just know you will beat it.

My best friend had the same form when he was 28. He had a great attitude through the entire treatment and beat it.

We are both now 60 and he's perfectly healthy. I just wish I was:cry:I'm told that it's just senility and I shouldn't worry about it:eek::bolt:
 
oldmodman said:
Keep your spirits up and I just know you will beat it.

My best friend had the same form when he was 28. He had a great attitude through the entire treatment and beat it.

We are both now 60 and he's perfectly healthy. I just wish I was:cry:I'm told that it's just senility and I shouldn't worry about it:eek::bolt:
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Thanks, that's one good thing I guess about ending up with something like this, the doctors watch you like a hawk for the rest of your life and not much gets by.


I finished my 2nd treatment last week. I get a PET scan in a couple weeks to see if this regimen is working, if it is they are going to give me the final treatment and then do the transplants but if its not responding to it my doctor said she wants to move right into the next treatment option. I haven't looked into what that one is much but it sounds like you have to have both ABVD and ICE fail before you can get it.

If superstitions mean anything, I never lost my hair with ABVD just thinned out some, a couple nights ago in the shower all of a sudden half of my hair came out. Maybe its a good sign its doing something?


Like you say and many others do, attitude is everything. I can't say I'm one of those over positive type people that gets annoying, but I don't get worried about much and I don't have a negative outlook which helps. Better weather always helps too. Time to make stuff pretty again.

Thanks for the support.
 
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