…Lymphoma.
Lymphoma’s actually not an ugly word. Might even be described as pleasant if one had no idea what it was. It’s certainly less terrifying than what it is. Cancer. You know the odds are at least one in three that we’ll get cancer before we die. So with those stats, why does it seem so unnatural to be the person who has it? The diagnosis was a week ago Thursday, (at least it was when I first started writing this) on the 21st of January 2016. Happy New Year! I wasn’t that upset though. I’m still not. This had been a long time coming. Nothing like three months of blood tests, scans, doctor’s visits and Googling like crazy to get you used to an idea. How did I get to cancer? The Backstory Starting about a year ago, I started waking up at night covered in sweat, once a month most of the time, occasionally once a week. I was north of 40 so I figured it was early onset menopause or something. I thought nothing of it, except that it was strange that it didn’t start like a burning in my chest as it had been described to me. I thought nothing of it, that is, until the fatigue set it. But it came on slowly, around the same time as a major life change that I wasn’t expecting, that brought a lot of extra activity. Moderate fatigue is common for someone with a chronic pain condition. So even though this fatigue