2021 was not the year that I thought it would be… after coming out of 2020 dealing with COVID, dad’s heart surgery, and the challenges we all faced I was ready refocus on living life to the fullest as I turned 40. This was my year to finally get it right!
Then in May, as the weather turned, I noticed swollen lymph nodes in my neck. Taking appropriate precautions, I saw my PCP who said many others were experiencing symptoms related to the vaccine and if they didn’t go away in a month to come back. They persisted and during that month I started experiencing other symptoms such as shortness of breath, elevated respiratory rate, decreased HRV, and increased HRH. Something just felt… off, and my body was telling me that something was wrong.
For the next 6 weeks I went through a barrage of tests ruling out just about all they could. This included COVID a dozen times, pneumonia (viral and bacterial), a variety of rare fungal diseases, thyroid cancer, lymphoma, tuberculosis, and taking more blood to run panels than a child has in their body.
The only thing left on the board was a classic presentation of sarcoidosis, a rare lung disease. At this point (mid-July), I started my respiratory system started deteriorating rapidly and I was experiencing neurological and motor skill degradation. I was put on high dose steroids which should have yielded some relief from the symptoms since that’s typical treatment for sarcoidosis, but things kept getting worse. They upped the dosage and told me to give it a few days to take hold. The fourth day into the new dosage, I woke up coughing up blood and after 8 hours in the ER was admitted to the hospital.
I was in the hospital a little over a week and under the care of a team of specialists including various pulmonology units, cardiology, internal medicine, oncology, neurology, surgery, and others. I’ll give the brief version of what was found because this is getting lengthy already. During my time in the hospital, they found blood clots in my lungs and legs, increased progression of lung issues experienced, lesions in my brain, and more alarming results from various CT scans throughout the week. The led to some of most shocking and stunning news of my life.
On September 2nd 2021 the results of my bronchoscopy confirmed the team’s suspicion: I had stage 4 lung cancer. The diagnosis took so long because I do not have a primary tumor, but it has metastasized throughout my body including my brain.
I'm currently in a stable place with the cancer even though the brain lesions have been zapped a few times within the past year. I have decided to raise funds through the network of friends I have in the fantasy football community as well as my personal network so that people can live even longer, fuller, and restriction-free lives if they develop ALK+ lung cancer.