Here is an email I sent to family on Feb. 18th, 2021 

“Since I am 55 I had the second colonoscopy of my life a couple of weeks ago.  The first was when I was 50. The gastroenterologist didn’t find colon cancer, but surprisingly and unfortunately she found non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I saw an oncologist Tuesday. He said it is a slow cancer that they normally don’t treat until there is physical discomfort that is on its way to being worse than the treatment would feel. Then, when they treat, the cancer is reliably responsive, and goes mostly away. Then it doesn’t come back for some to many years, but usually does come back eventually and has to be treated again. I don’t have any physical discomfort. Next Tuesday I am having a PET scan to see if it is other places in my body or not. It is a little more complicated than that because having follicular lymphoma isn’t rare, but having it in the colon is more rare. The oncologist here (who I like, and everyone likes), said I should go have it checked out by the “Lymphoma guru” at the cancer center in Rochester. So after this testing I’ll go consult with him.

 You’all may be thinking, like I am… but wait!  aren’t you going to live in India in June? The oncologist said it is a long time until June, so wait to think about that until I know more.”

In the weeks after that email, I had the PET scan, visited the lymphoma specialist in Rochester and had a bone marrow biopsy. I was feeling healthy the whole time.  They found more lymphoma in lymph nodes in my neck, under one arm, someplace in the center of my torso on both sides and both sides of my groin, and in my bone marrow. Some of the cancer in the colon has transformed from Follicular to “Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma” which is more aggressive, but still a treatable cancer. Then I had a chemo port put in (on?) below my collar bone. I started chemotherapy on March 25th.  The treatment is “R-CHOP” which is a standard treatment for some types of lymphoma. You can google it if you are curious about chemotherapy mixes.  The plan is to have 6 three week cycles of it.  Then they will scan again and do another colonoscopy and bone marrow biopsy and hopefully not find any left. Then, instead of going  to start a new job in India in June, I hope to be able to go in September.