I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma

At the time of my cancer diagnosis, I was just feeling complete shock, I guess, because what happened to me is I went into the hospital on a Monday just to get some scans because my doctor wasn’t really sure what was going on, so I really just thought it was some sort of asthma acting up, because that’s what she thought.

So I went in on a Monday, I was checked into the hospital on a Monday afternoon and they did tell me that I had a mass in my chest and now, at that time without the tests—you know, until they have the testing, they’re not going to tell you what they think it is, but they were pretty sure it was Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma already that Monday.

So that was a Monday…on Wednesday, we got the results that it was cancer, and then on Friday, I started my treatments. So I had five days where I was in the hospital, they were running tests consistently, I wasn’t able to eat much, I had kind of—I mean, they would come into my room and say I couldn’t eat for twelve hours because they had to run tests and things like that. So I guess I don’t think I was feeling much except completely overwhelmed, you know…it was just, like, this strange feeling of I don’t know what’s going on and I’m not in control of the situation, particularly because, you know, I never thought I would get cancer. I have a very large family—extended family—and no one’s ever had cancer at any point in their lives, so it just wasn’t really on my radar screen. So the fact that I was diagnosed with cancer was just strange to me. But, you know, it started hitting me when my hair was falling out…but I had three friends who were wonderful and they all came over and we shaved our heads together, so that was really fun. Then, I don’t know, I mean that part of it wasn’t as bad, but I realized once my hair started growing back how much I missed it.

So, I had four months of treatment, I didn’t do anything specific as far as trying to preserve my eggs or my fertility, and I actually got my period through the entire sessions of chemotherapy, and I never stopped having it, so I was pretty fortunate, and I don’t know if I’m going to be fertile or if I’m going to be able to have children—they don’t have specific tests yet that will tell you exactly, they have tests that I guess can give you some idea of whether or not you might be able to have children, but nothing is for sure yet.