Step 1: Diagnosis

Greetings all, and welcome to my blog!  I have never been one to feel I have that much that I needed to share with the world.  I infrequently post on Facebook and I've never tweeted a day in my life =)  But...things have a funny way of changing.  Following a cough that began around late November 2010, I ended up being diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma on June 3, 2011.  HL, or the Hodge, as I like to call it, is "a cancer of the lymph tissue found in the lymph nodes, spleen, liver, bone marrow, and other sites." cited PubMed Health http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001606/
You can click in there to read more about it if you'd like.  So, what I have is stage IVb HL.  The staging relates to the number of lymph nodes involved, the location and if the disease has traveled beyond the lymph nodes, which mine has, and is in the lungs.  But don't let IV scare you, what I have is very concentrated around the lungs and is all above the diaphragm AND my bone marrow is clean, which is super awesome, so it's more like a II.  The B is if there are side effects like night sweats and weight loss, which I did have.  Other great news...HL is one of the most curable cancers out there, with the treatment being ABVD chemotherapy, sometimes followed with radiation.

So all of that being said...there is still a lot to get caught up on to where I am today, which is 7 days after my first ABVD chemo treatment.  And trust me...there was a lot in those few weeks!  But right now, I am tired and heading to bed.  Good night all and I'll be posting more soon!
Love and Light,
Emily