When WebMD Says It's Cancer...
We have ALL done it. We experience symptoms out of the norm, google it and WebMD says it is cancer.
A few years ago, I was working out regularly, working, going to school and applying deodorant 1-2 times a day. One day, while applying *unnamed brand* I noticed a painful lump in my armpit. It was a solid mass, under the skin, that was painful to the touch. Immediately I started researching and the first cause the internet pointed its finger to was breast cancer. I nearly fell out of my seat and then as I scrolled a little further down the page I read that it was actually more likely to just be a build-up of deodorant in my pores. Which is one very common side effect of using chemical laden, aluminum filled, deodorants you find at the store. This very near-cancer experience led me down a path of discovery about the chemicals that are in the products we put on our skin (our largest organ) which are then absorbed into our bodies. From that day, I have been an all-natural, organic, granola type of babe.
But what about when it is cancer? The most common question I receive is how did I find out I had cancer?
In November of 2019, I was scheduled to attend the birthday dinner of a dear friend. I hadn’t been feeling well for a few weeks, I told Rob I felt like I was swollen constantly. Nothing seemed to look good on me and I had also noticed I was getting winded very easily. My first inclination was that I had let myself go. I was once a very athletic person, but other goals had taken my time away from the gym and focused it elsewhere. I was excited to go though so, I finally found something I could wear to the party that I didn’t believe I looked horrendous in; it was a vintage, high neck, suede top that always looks good because of the way the leather has softened over time. Although this time, for the first time, the top was very tight around my neck, uncomfortably so. But I had a party to get to! I would examine my neck later. At this point, I also had a mild cough, dry but worse when I laid down and deep sounding.
After I came home from the party, I was explaining to Rob about the tightness and I asked him to give my neck a quick look. I took off my top and Rob’s eyes widened at the sight of my neck. My neck was so swollen on either side that it looked like I had two golf ball-sized goiters. As an ex-healthcare profession, I assumed the cough and the swollen lymph nodes were connected and my nodes were currently engaged in a battle against some viral infection trying to take root. A few days later, when my symptoms only worsened (my neck turning an unhealthy purple-ish color) I decided to consult a doctor. Well, a minute clinic. After work, I drove to a clinic that was on my way home, knowing I didn’t currently have health insurance. I explained to the woman all that had happened, showed her my neck, was truthful about the lack of insurance and also explained I wasn’t too keen on paying $150 for her to tell me I would be fine in a few days. When she saw my neck, her eyes nearly popped out of her head and she immediately begged me to go to the emergency room. To which, in my head, I responded with a decisive no, but thanks. Rob on the other hand was a little more on the side of wanting his new wife to stay alive so, he drove me, against my will, to the ER.
Once in the ER, I went through the last few weeks in detail and the physician’s assistant who was working in the ER didn’t quite believe the things I was saying to her. She even went as far to double check with Rob if he believed my neck was swollen much more than it usually is. Then, I could hear her out in the hall explaining to someone that she didn’t believe anything was wrong with me; that nothing really seemed abnormal. In the meantime, a woman had come to take me to a scan, which I swiftly turned down and three seconds later guess who marched in guns ablaze… This was the interaction:
Her: “Why did you turn down the scan?!”
Me: “I could hear you in the hall and you don’t think anything is wrong with me! So, I am not going to go.”
Her: “Well, I won’t know if anything is wrong unless you go to the scan.”
Me: “Yes but, we currently don’t have insurance, so I can’t be rushed into a scan that will cost us thousands of dollars, especially if you don’t think it will yield any sort of answer you don’t already ‘know’.”
Her: “Why did you even come to the ER then?”
Me: “I didn’t want to come here, I am here at the behest of my husband and the minute clinic doctor.”
Her: deep heavy sigh, stomps out of the room.
She then proceeded to get the doctor and explain to him everything that had just unfolded and very shortly thereafter he entered the room, speaking in a low, calm voice and convinced me to at least let him do an ultrasound. He completed the ultrasound and gave me the diagnosis of an “unknown virus” and that I should be fine in a few days, but before I left he was going to give me a dose of steroids to help with the swelling. With that I left the hospital and it would be another 5 weeks before I laid in the same ER hospital bed.
Once I found out it was merely a virus, I began hitting the gym hard. Particularly cardio. I attended HIIT and cycling as well as putting in the extra time on the Stairmaster because I was determined to sweat it out. But each week I was getting more and more tired. Fast forward to New Years, Rob and I had a few extra days off, so we decided to deep clean the house and I mean deep clean. On our hands and knees cleaning the grout, tile, cupboards, bathtub, under the bed, you name it, we cleaned it. At the very end of the day, I bent down to put something into the laundry basket and a sharp pain in my back doubled me over. My first thought was that I had just thrown out my back, my second and subsequent self-deprecating thoughts were about how out of shape I currently was at 27. I didn’t tell Rob about the pain I was in until 3 days later because I was embarrassed. However, my right eye had now swelled almost shut, my face hurt and there was no denying I was getting worse. I told Rob to drop me at the ER on his way to work.
This time, my experience was vastly different for two reasons and the biggest being now I had amazing health insurance through my company and I requested they do every test under the sun. A different physician’s assistant, a gentleman, came into my room after about an hour and explained to me that I had some “weird” and possibly not connected symptoms. He then tried to man-splain to me how my eye was probably swollen because “you girl’s like to look nice by using makeup but don’t always take it off all the way and it leads to infections.”. Sir, I spend half my damn paycheck on all-natural beauty products and you don’t think I know what could happen if I didn’t properly remove it each night?! Bitch, please.
A few more hours and scans later, I still hadn’t heard from anyone and at this point I had been in the ER since 5pm, it was 10pm and I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. I called for the nurse to ask her for saltines, but she told me I couldn’t because it was possible that I might need to go for another scan but either way the doctor should be in to talk to me soon. No more than five minutes after this exchange a doctor entered my room, sat at my beside and said, “You are going to be admitted into the hospital tonight, right now actually, because we believe based on what we have seen on your preliminary scans that you have cancer. Do you have any questions?”. In my mind, I had a million, but I couldn’t verbalize a single one. All I could do was dial the phone and have her talk to Rob to explain everything she had just said to me. I was in such disbelief, there was no way I had cancer. I was young and reasonably fit, I ate healthy, I tried to avoid products with too many chemical additives, I spent extra money to avoid carcinogens. There was no way I had cancer. But actually, I did. Do still currently.
Further tests showed that I had stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. It had infected all the lymph nodes in my neck, in my armpits, all down my sternum and branching out from there. There was a small infection in my left mammary gland and one in my right lung that had caused a build up of fluid on my lung. 1.3 liters of fluid (almost two wine bottles) had backed up onto my lung causing my chest and back pain and was the sole reason I was constantly out of breath. My right lung had almost zero space to take in oxygen, so I had basically been down to one lung. Additionally, one swollen node was pressing on a drainage valve from head that had caused my eye to swell (not my skincare routine) and a second rather large node was pressing on my pulmonary vena cava, one of the veins that supplies your heart with oxygenated blood. I definitely had cancer and it was pretty bad. It was then explained to me that cancer cells will divide and replicate much faster with increased metabolic activity, so all that working out I had done to “sweat it out” probably only exacerbated the entire situation. This is how my 2020 started.