I was diagnosed with Non Hodgkin’s primary mediastinal diffuse large b-cell lymphoma in July 2005. Here’s my story:

In April, as I was finishing up my senior year at college, I came down with a case of strep throat - my first ever. The nurse practitioner gave me a round of penicillin, and it went away.

May rolled around, and there was lots to do. I had finals, I had to pack up, there was Senior Week, and finally graduation. In the middle of Senior Week, I got another sore throat. However, I attributed it to the stress of everything that was going on, plus allergies - there was pollen flying everywhere around campus. 

Graduation came and went, but the sore throat did not. Three days after I moved back home, I went to my doctor, who said I had a second round of strep. She prescribed me a Z-pack, which was a stronger antibiotic than the penicillin. A week later, I still felt like crap, and now it was accompanied by a hacking cough. I was given a third round of antibiotics, this time Biaxin.

I finished the round of Biaxin. The strep went away, but the cough got so bad to the point I was vomiting everytime I coughed. So I went to the doctor again, and she said, “This isn’t normal,” and sent me to get a chest x-ray.

I went to the radiologist to get the chest x-ray done - no biggie. The x-ray itself took all of two minutes. I got dressed back into my regular clothes after the test and figured I’d go right home.

Not so fast. “Um, Amanda, we’d like to take a CT scan of your lungs,” the radiologist said. 

A CT scan of my lungs? What for? I really had no choice but to agree, so they injected me with iodine and took a CT scan a few minutes later.

It worried me. Why did they want a CT scan if all I needed was a chest x-ray? I asked around, and everyone told me, “It’s routine.” Not so, I would find out. They just didn’t want me to worry. 

My doctor called me a few days later and told me to come into the office that afternoon, preferably with another person. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, only to come in. Later, when I went into the office, she told me that the CT scan was taken because the chest x-rays showed the lymph nodes in my lungs were severely enlarged. She said, “It’s probably nothing, but we’re going to take some tests to be sure.” They would include blood tests to check for sarcoidosis and a biopsy to check for lymphoma.

All the blood tests came out normal, so we decided to go see a thoracic surgeon for the biopsy. Pre-surgery, he looked at the CT scans and said that, even though the lymph nodes were enlarged, it probably wasn’t cancerous, but more likely infection left over from the strep throat and coughing bouts. He was still going to do the biopsy to make sure.

I had a PET scan, and the lymph nodes in my lungs lit up like Christmas trees. “It’s a 50/50 chance you have lymphoma,” the thoracic surgeon said, adding that he was confidant it probably wasn’t.

I had the biopsy done, called a mediastenoscopy. It was an outpatient procedure, which meant putting me under anesthesia, making a two-inch incision in my neck, and getting a biopsy of the lymph node tissue by going behind my sternum. It left me in a bit of pain afterwards, mostly due to the hacking cough, which I still had. It was also painful to yawn for a week and a half, because it stretched the muscles by the incision.

A week later, we called to get the results of the mediastenoscopy. The thoracic surgeon said, “It’s a 95% chance you have lymphoma. We sent the sample off to the best here at Stony Brook, but we’re going to send it off for a second round of testing just to make sure.” 

I waited for another week, when they called and said I definitely had lymphoma. That was also the same day I received my first job offer as a reporter for a magazine. So, I unfortunately had to tell the magazine no - but they told me to call after I was done with treatment and they'd have something for me. 

My treatment began almost immediately. I had a PIC line put in my arm, as the main tumor in my chest was too large to allow me to have a port-a-cath. I was to undergo R-EPOCH chemotherapy, no radiation, which meant that I had to stay in the hospital for 96 consecutive hours every three weeks while I received a continuous drip.

The chemotherapy regimen was an experimental one, and a strong one, to boot. By the end of my second treatment, I was declared in remission. I still had to finish the treatments, so six cycles and 10 blood transfusions later, it was all over. I recently celebrated my 500th day of being out of treatment.

I do have to get PET scans and see the oncologist quarterly, but at the end of the year, it will only be twice yearly. In 2009, I will be declared totally cancer-free. So far, everything's good, and I know it's going to stay that way.

Currently, I'm writing a book on my experience - but looking at it from the funny side of things. Like, when my sister's dog ate my hair as she shaved my head. When my PIC line fell out at a rock concert. When I painted my bald head orange, glued a stem on it, and went as a pumpkin for Halloween. You have to find humor in the tumor!

You can find more about my cancer experience over at my blog at http://www.amanadanoelle.com