I was diagnosed with Stage 2 Hodgkin's Lymphoma during my engagement

My name is Vika, and I was diagnosed with Stage 2 Hodgkin's lymphoma two years ago, when I was 25; I’m now 27. I was diagnosed the year…exactly a year after I was engaged to be married, so, subsequently I had to postpone my wedding—I think we had about two different dates. Finally, it was the third date, which happens to be a year ago, so now I’m currently married.

But when I was diagnosed—basically I found a lump right here, my left side above my clavicle, and because both my husband and I are health care providers, we knew that this was…you know, a bad sign. So, the very next day after I found it I went to the doctor and—it took about a month for a diagnosis. The whole time we were thinking maybe it was an infection, maybe it was cancer, small chance…we didn’t like to think that it was cancer, but, you know, unfortunately it turned out to be cancer. And so that time was extremely stressful, you know, and all we could do was put our care in the hands of our provider. And so, but we did take it upon ourselves—my husband and I are lucky to be health care providers, so we had the resources available to us to look into our options for fertility, and it was the vigilance of my husband and I…we—together we researched our options and thought about how our fertility can be affected by chemotherapy.