My evil twin

Nearly two months ago was my 'diagnosis day' and tomorrow I'm finally beginning chemotherapy. What's the hold-up here? Well, two things. First of all, the national cancer center here doesn't treat lymphoma so I needed to move to a new hospital and repeat a lot of things. There are several hospitals in Amsterdam and all of them have hematology departments. In order to improve specialization and reduce redundancy, the cancer center dropped hematology so with my lymphoma diagnosis, I had to go elsewhere for treatment. This meant I needed a new team of specialists reviewing my case and fine tuning the diagnosis and had to repeat several meetings to prepare me for the Hogdkin's treatment that I previously had with a range of specialists to prepare for the treatment for nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Seeing hematologists instead of ENTs was a breath of fresh air. Suddenly all my 'peculiar' symptoms, namely the pain in my lymph nodes from alcohol, were recognize...

I've been assured by many people that the diagnostics part can be the worst part of cancer - mostly the uncertainty of it all. I can hardly imagine that that's the truth but, hey, the thought helps mitigate some anxiety ahead of treatment. After I first went to see my huisarts/GP, it went from zero to 100 real quick and I'm still only beginning to settle down. Monday, January 13 my huisarts called me to come in to see her to discuss the results of my ultrasound the day Friday before. Turned out that it was indeed swollen lymph nodes in my neck and that they had their own blood vessels. I was immediately referred to the ENT doctors at the national cancer institute here in Amsterdam for further investigation. The following Monday began my 'sneldiagnostiek' (fast diagnosis) process at the cancer hospital. Fast is a relative term; in the end it took three weeks to reach a diagnosis but there was a small hiccup along the way. In my intake appointment with the ENT t...

Where do I even begin? I've been considering writing a blog about my experience with cancer for awhile now...for my own processing, to share it with family and friends, and to provide information to others in a similar position (as I've found so much help in other blogs myself). But finishing up work between a million and one hospital visits kept my brain's capacity maxed out while I also debated how wise it would be to put such personal information out on the internet in the first place. Now that treatment is potentially days away and we're all stuck in home isolation anyway due to Covid-19, I figured this would be a great use of my time and one of the few ways to share the experience with others. So, how'd we get here? It all begins with my evil twin - the large lump on my neck that popped up right above my collarbone in early December 2019. For the first few weeks, I didn't worry about it too much and just waited for it to disappear. I figured it was not...