How did we get here?

Cycle 2 begins tomorrow, and I've been reflecting on how this journey began. I'd like to share it with you all.

Looking back, my oncologist says there was no sign of cHL in a chest X-ray I had gotten in 2016. We don't know when the cancer began to manifest, but I started feeling symptoms of cHL in early 2023. My oncologist explained that this cancer has periods of dormancy and rapid growth, so there's really no way to tell how long I had it before symptoms started.

I thought it was PPD somehow returning or something new like PMDD, so we tried treating the symptoms through psychology and psychiatry to no avail. For two years I tried different medications, but nothing could cure the fatigue and irritability.

By May of this year, after a medication change, I began experiencing chest pain. I thought it was anxiety at first, but one morning in mid-June, I woke up feeling like an elephant was standing in stilettos on my chest. My psychiatrist worried the recent med change could be causing a cardiac event, so she sent me to the ER. The EKG and blood work came back normal, but an X-ray - ordered as an extra measure - revealed a large, unexpected mass in my chest. I was immediately transferred to a different hospital, and the following weeks began the journey of diagnosis.

Each biopsy was followed by days of waiting for results, only to hear "non-diagnostic" and prepare for the next biopsy: first a fine needle biopsy, then my first ever surgical biopsy via bronchoscopy, followed by a whopper of a surgical biopsy via thoracotomy, and finally a bone marrow biopsy, the one that rattled me the most. Yet still, results remained inconclusive.

Thankfully, the surgeons who performed the bronchoscopy and the thoracotomy biopsies were able to obtain, as they put it, "juicy chunks" of the masses. Samples were sent all over the East Coast to the best pathology labs in the country. Finally in late July after weeks of waiting, we received confirmation that the Reed-Sternberg cells had been identified, and chemo started just days afterwards.

In my early twenties, I thought it was normal to be short-sighted, hardly being able to see or plan a decade into the future. By 25 years old, I began focusing on cleaning up past mistakes and stepping into adulthood. But as the years passed, I still couldn't see my future. My soulful foresight felt... disabled. I prayed to the Lord and asked what is in store for me - which path will I walk? Where will it lead me? I ask too many questions - the inquisitive child within me always has... but this time was different. The answer I felt was strange - I could see myself only until age 30, but beyond that was a wall of mystery and dread. Fear and anxiety grew, no medicine was working to make me feel better, and I was supposed to be in my prime years! I thought that my body was broken... or even worse, that I myself was broken.

Now I understand. What I felt wasn’t weakness. It wasn’t laziness or lack of passion. It was cancer—quietly consuming my body. That sense of "my life is ending" was my body telling the truth before doctors could confirm it.

It makes sense now why I couldn't see past 30. My life as I knew it was going to end. I also didn't foresee this: I have the strength to fight. Not just the cancer, but the battle within my mindset, too.

It's taken time for me to wash away the self-doubt that was brought into my life by unknowingly living with cancer. But I know this now: I am strong. I am motivated. I am faithful. I am passionate. I am all of these things and more, and I am ready to carry who I truly am into this new life.

Merely decades ago, this diagnosis would have been a death sentence, but today it's an opportunity for me to seize each day and allow the Lord to work through me for decades to come. He has big plans for me, and I can feel it now.

Sincerely,

Kayla