One Year Ago Today

This is a message I just sent to the doctor who diagnosed my lymphoma. I hope it brightens his day!

Hi Dr. Tompkins,

I have no clue if you remember me, or if this email is still active, but exactly one year ago to the day you delivered my diagnosis of Primary Mediastinal B-cell Lymphoma while I was sitting in a hospital bed being treated for a blood clot. I just wanted to say thank you for your quick actions getting the appropriate scans and biopsies before the lymphoma progressed any further. I finished my chemotherapy at the NIH back in June, and so far so good. I have a pesky area of uptake in my thymus in the PET scans, but my doctors are feeling comfortable that it's likely thymic rebound since I'm over six months out of treatment and nothing is growing.

I also wanted to thank you for your bedside manner. I have heard some true horror stories about how other patients' doctors told them they had cancer. I sincerely appreciate the compassionate way you told me and how you gave me a lot of hope by saying, "you have every reason to believe you're going to beat this." I really clung to those words throughout this whole ordeal.

If you get bored one day and want to see things from the patient's end, I blogged about my experiences atwww.mylymphomalog.blogspot.com. I haven't updated it recently, but I probably should soon. I've found the online social network of cancer survivors to be extremely helpful during treatment and after.

Well, thanks again for saving my life. Keep up the good work ;) 

All the best,

Shana