How This Journey Began: From Unexplained Symptoms to a Hodgkin Lymphoma Diagnosis

As I prepared to start my second cycle of chemotherapy, I found myself reflecting on how this journey began. The path from "something feels wrong" to "you have cancer" was longer and more winding than I ever expected. This is that story.

The Invisible Timeline

Looking back, my oncologist says there was no sign of classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) in a chest X-ray I had in 2016. We don't know exactly when the cancer began to manifest, but I started feeling symptoms 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 it was growing before symptoms appeared.

That uncertainty is one of the hardest parts to process. How long was this inside me? When did my body start fighting a battle I didn't know about?

Misdiagnosis and Missed Answers

The symptoms started subtly - crushing fatigue and irritability that wouldn't lift no matter what I tried. I thought it was postpartum depression somehow returning, or perhaps something new like PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder). For two years, we tried treating the symptoms through psychology and psychiatry. I cycled through different medications, hoping something would help.

Nothing did. The fatigue remained. The irritability persisted. Something was clearly wrong, but we were looking in all the wrong places.

The Morning Everything Changed

By May 2024, after yet another medication change, I began experiencing chest pain. At first, I thought it was anxiety - just another symptom to add to the list. But one morning in mid-June, I woke up feeling like an elephant was standing in stilettos on my chest. The pressure was unbearable.

My psychiatrist, worried the recent medication change could be causing a cardiac event, sent me straight to the ER. The EKG came back normal. Blood work looked fine. But an X-ray - ordered as an extra precautionary measure - revealed something unexpected: a large mass in my chest.

I was immediately transferred to a different hospital. The journey of diagnosis had begun, though I didn't yet understand how long and frustrating it would be.

The Biopsy Marathon

Each biopsy was followed by days of agonizing waiting, only to hear "non-diagnostic" and prepare for the next attempt:

First, a fine needle biopsy

Then my first-ever surgical biopsy via bronchoscopy

Followed by what I call "the whopper" - a surgical biopsy via thoracotomy (they opened my chest)

Finally, a bone marrow biopsy, which rattled me more than any of the others

After each procedure, the same frustrating result: inconclusive. We still didn't know what we were fighting.

The Answer Finally Comes

Thankfully, the surgeons who performed the bronchoscopy and thoracotomy were able to obtain what they called "juicy chunks" of the masses - substantial enough samples to send to the best pathology labs all over the East Coast.

Finally, in late July after weeks of waiting and wondering, we received confirmation: Reed-Sternberg cells had been identified. Classical Hodgkin lymphoma. The diagnosis I'd been both dreading and needing.

Chemotherapy started just days later.

The Truth My Body Already Knew

Here's the part that still takes my breath away: my body knew before anyone could diagnose it.

In my early twenties, I thought it was normal to be short-sighted, hardly able to see or plan a decade into the future. By 25, I was focused 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 constantly. I asked the Lord what was in store for me - which path would I walk? Where would it lead? I've always asked too many questions; the inquisitive child in me never stopped. But this time felt different.

The answer I sensed was strange and terrifying: I could see myself only until age 30. Beyond that was a wall of mystery and dread. Fear and anxiety grew. No medicine was working. I was supposed to be in my prime years, but instead I felt like I was falling apart.

I thought my body was broken. Or worse - that I myself was fundamentally broken.

Understanding Now What I Couldn't Then

Now I understand. What I felt wasn't weakness. It wasn't laziness or lack of passion or some character flaw I needed to fix. It was cancer - quietly consuming my body, stealing my energy, clouding my future.

That sense of "my life is ending" was my body telling the truth before doctors could confirm it. I couldn't see past 30 because, in a very real sense, my life as I knew it was going to end there.

But here's what I didn't foresee: I have the strength to fight. Not just the cancer cells multiplying in my chest, but the battle within my mindset too.

Reclaiming Who I Am

It's taken time to wash away the self-doubt that came from unknowingly living with cancer for years. The voice that said I was lazy when I couldn't get out of bed. The guilt over being irritable with my kids. The shame of feeling broken when everyone said I should be thriving.

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'm ready to carry who I truly am into this new life that begins on the other side of treatment.

A Death Sentence Becomes An Opportunity

Merely decades ago, a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis would have been a death sentence. My grandmother Gigi was given six months to live with her stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis in 2008. She asked them to try anyway, and she lived another 17 years.

Today, my diagnosis isn't an ending - it's an opportunity. An opportunity to seize each day, to fight with everything I have, and to allow the Lord to work through me for decades to come.

He has big plans for me. I can feel it now.

And unlike before, I can finally see past 30. I can see 31. I can see my kids growing up. I can see a future worth fighting for.

💜 Kayla