Will Swetnam
Irving, Texas
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By trade, I'm a computer consultant, working for a technology consultancy in Dallas, Texas.
I grew up, for the most part, in Northern Virginia (Reston, Herndon, and Vienna), where I was diagnosed and treated. After treatment I became more of a cyclist, even commuting for about an 14 month stint without many days off (less than 14, maybe). I moved to Dallas in 1996 and now both ride mountain and road bikes; have been the "Team Manager" for my local MTB club team for a few seasons now, and have been the webmaster for this site since its inception (the site, not the group). Other than cycling, I like to rock climb, travel, and sometimes enjoy a fine restaurant just a little too much... (hey, that's one of the reasons why I cycle!)
Cancer Overview:
General Cancer Type: Lymphoma - Non Hodgkins
Specific Cancer Type: Immunoblastic Lymphoma
Treatment Summary:
I had a 2.5 pound non-hodgkins lymphoma (stage 1-E immunoblastic to be specific) in my upper right chest. It had grown till it ran out of room, then grew invasively into my right lung, my pericardium, and around the phrenic nerve on the right side. Pre-op my physicians thought I had a benign "thymoma" (the thymus is a small gland that is at the base of the neck and acts as part of your immune system while in the womb, when you are born, it shrivels and becomes inactive, randomly it grows in some, and with no where else to grow, expands down into the chest, creating a "traditional sail shape" in a chest x-ray). So they thought they would crack my chest, remove the tumor and things would be fine. Well, they discovered that it was malignant, had to remove 15% of my right lung, the phrenic nerve on that side, and a 25 sq inch piece of my pericardium.
This posed a problem for my oncologist. This type of lymphoma, very treatable by chemo and radiation, is usually not surgically removed; so what to do with me. My understanding is that they treated me as if I had not been "de-bulked" in case they had missed any of the tumor during surgery. I was treated with four 28 day cycles of chemo with injections on days 1 and 8. A month after I finished Chemo (an easy day to remember, the last day of my last cycle was on my 25th birthday) I began four weeks of radiation treatment.
Technical stuff now: Stage 1-E, in 1991, treated by surgical removal of a large mass from his chest, and chemotherapy (ProMACE-CytaBOM without the Bleomycin), followed by 23 radiation sessions, totalling 3960 cGy.
Net result, only 1/2 my diaphragm works, the other half has atrophied and has further reduced the lung capacity on that side to roughly 50%, and I have to use my abdominal muscles to help inflate that side of my chest. Other than a slight plural-pericardial rub (the sound of my heart rubbing against the hole in my pericardium) there were no other issues.
Stories:
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