THE NODULAR NEWS

--originally posted 12/10/09--

Hello LG -

As some of you know, last Friday, I had a biopsy on some lymph nodes that had gone awry in my shoulder/neck area. The concern was that I had no infection, so no "good" reason for those lymph nodes (which help transport white blood cells to infection sites as well as clear out infections) to be enlarged (which they were).

So that was the reason they needed to biopsy them. This involved a quick surgery this past Friday. Today I went to find out what the results of the testing are.

Turns out, it's Hodgkins Lymphoma. It's a type of cancer, but, treatable and curable. The surgeon said "they're going to cure you."

But, he's just the surgeon, not the oncologist. So the oncology peeps need to do a PET scan (this will show where else the cancer may be in my body) and from there they will decide what type of treatment will get rid of it. The treatment is your standard chemotherapy or radiation (or both).

The surgeon told me that sometimes Hodgkins is isolated to one area (rather than spreading throughout the lymphatic system (which covers your whole body)) so my next prayer for God will be that he has isolated it to my shoulder/neck area. This means they can radiate the crap out of my shoulder and I hopefully won't have to do chemo.

I can't really think too much about treatment until the PET scan is complete and the oncologists have had a chance to put their game plan together.

While this is probably going to be inconvenient and uncomfortable, it's just cancer. People survive it all the time. What's more, God's going to get some great press out of this (aka glory) so that's all that counts. He has given me some great peace with this whole thing. I always struggled with trusting Him completely and now, since there is NOTHING I can do about this I have placed it in His hands. Isn't that nice of Him? To give me something like this so I have no choice but to trust Him. What a Guy. What a great great Guy!

Thanks so much for your prayers and texts and calls and thoughts. I really value our friendship and relationship and am glad to have you all to talk to. If there is anything I need I will be sure to let you know.

I will keep you up-to-date on this whole "situation" as details and news become available.

Love you all :)

Trina