DIAGNOSIS

Monday, Jan 18, 2016

Dr. Scalcini called. I had just put Reid down for a nap and caught a glimpse of Mike talking on the phone. I could tell by his body language that it wasn't just one of his friends calling to check up on him. I went into our room and sat beside him on the phone. I could catch Dr. Scalcini's Italian accent right away....

I didn't know what she was saying, but I could tell it wasn't good. Mike wasn't handling it very well. He hung the phone up and dropped it. He told me, "It's lymphoma." We hugged and cried and then hugged the girls who thought it was humorous that we were crying. We pulled ourselves together and decided that we are just glad to know what we are fighting.

Through the next couple weeks, we made a few more trips up to the Mayo Clinic. We met with our oncologist. Her name is Dr. Bennani.  Mike had a bone marrow biopsy, which wasn't bad because he was sedated. He also had a Pet/CT Scan. We went over all of those results with our oncologist and got our official diagnosis.

Stage 3, unclassifiable, B-Cell Gray Zone Lymphoma.

Wondering what that means? Did you think Lymphoma was either Hodgkin's or Non-Hodgkin's were the only 2 options? Yeah, same here. So basically what Mike has is a lymphoma that they cannot classify as either of those because the cells show features of both kinds. This puts him in the "gray zone." (such fancy terminology. haha) There isn't a lot known about this type of lymphoma. There are estimated to be around 300 cases in the US. Oh, Mike everyone knew you were special. :)