It was Sunday and my husband said that he would get a massage and that would hold him over until the next day-he could go to the doctor and demand a CT scan. The massage started the spasms. I took him to the emergency room and despite the fact that when they touched the particular spot on his back he would almost jump off the table, they almost sent him home, not being able to find anything. Someone said, maybe it's a kidney stone. When they scanned for a kidney stone, they found a mass by his right kidney. Further testing gave us a diagnosis of Hodgkins Lymphoma.
Not too big of a problem, Hodgkins has a high survival rate.
But after the biopsy, they think it's non-hodgkins lymphoma - they sent us to Baylor University Hospital. The experts at Baylor reached another diagnosis. Peripheral T cell lymphoma
It went from a group of pulled muscles.... to Hodgkins Lymphoma,
to peripheral T-Cell lymphoma, (30+% chance survival, average survival being 5 years.)
They went ahead and gave him a dose of chemotherapy because most of the labs were back and pointed to T-cell lymphoma. It must have been strong dose because he went bald quickly. About a week later he devloped a blood clot in his right lung and had to be put in hospital again (3rd time), and they put him on blood thinner - (Coumadin)
Imagine having the conversations we had. We began giving his stuff to friends. Hearing, "I'm giving away the pinball machine because after I'm gone I know you won't use it." Believing he had peripheral T-cell lymphoma was the worst 3 weeks of my life!
Then Dr. from Baylor got the slides from the biopsy done in the first hospital and said, no, this is not lymphoma.
What they think happened ...this "diagnostic dilemma" was that T-cells were reacting to the tumor by surrounding it and fighting it, and the Dr. at first hospital biopsied the surrounding T cells not the tumor itself. So, now, there is talk of a germ cell cancer instead of a lymphoma. (higher survival rate)
The second biopsy was done at Baylor. They tried to do it lapryscopically, like the first one, but couldn't get to the mass. So they sliced him open (about 6 inches), had the lab pathologist in the room to test the tissue samples as they were being extracted.
So the final confirmed results was "Lance Armstrong" testicular cancer, even though it was in back of the right kidney. Much higher survival rate. Still a long hard road. But much better than the T-cell lymphoma.
It is now March 20th, 2009 and he is done with all the chemo. He has to coninually test because of the Coumadin he is on for the blood clot.
As of 4-7-09, he was pronounced Cancer FREE!
Update:1-23-2010
He had a CT scan cancer still gone, but he sometimes still feels pain in the same area.
Update: 1-12-2011
Today is our 20th wedding anniversary. I'm so glad I still have him.
Although he never returned to 100%.... I still love him 100%!!!