Treatment

This treatment was not going to be as simple as my breast cancer. I wished I could get something cut out of me. Lymphoma is a cancer of the blood and spreads via this liquid highway throughout my body. The treatment is chemotherapy. My particular type of lymphoma came with some extra challenges. It is chemoresistant. Because it is rare, there are not many chemo solutions. It is very aggressive. It always comes back, and each time it comes back it becomes more difficult to treat. I had a 25% survival rate after five years. Later this went down into the teens because of a factor identified in my blood. Here is where I hit one of many vital pieces of luck. My doctors are at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago. My oncologist’s specific area of knowledge and research is Peripheral T cell Lymphoma. In fact, she sits on the national board that determines testing and treatment options for Peripheral T cell Lymphoma!! So she has the best possible treatment knowledge bank and incredibly intuition. Usually, the treatment plan is for a series of chemo treatments followed by monitoring. If cancer comes back after repeating chemo, stem cell transplant is undertaken. In my case, my team decided my plan would be not to wait for the disease to return after remission. Instead, I would immediately get stem cell transplant. If chemo and transplant are successful, my survivorship goes up to 80%. I will take that!