Symptoms and Staging

Up to this point I have not shown any of the classic symptoms of someone who has Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I'm looking at this as a positive and I'm hoping that this in an indicator that the disease has not spread throughout my body. In any case a process for staging needs to take place. And so this past week and all of next week I will be going through the staging process. Staging is going to help the doctors determine how far along the cancer has progressed (i.e. has it spread to liver, gallbladder, spleen, other lymph nodes throughout the body, etc.). Once that process is complete, there will be a plan of action as to what type of treatment I will be going through. First indicators is that it will be 24 weeks of chemotherapy with a possibility of complimentary treatments of radiotherapy. The tests that I will be going through this week are a respiratory test for my lungs, PET scan to check my heart, another CT abdominal scan to see if there are additional tumors in the lower half of my body, a bone marrow extraction to see if my bone marrow has been affected and additional blood tests. Out of all the tests, the bone marrow extraction does not seem appealing to me. Jamming a needle inside my pelvic bone and extracting liquid seems quite painful. That's the first test I'll be going to on Monday. In addition to those tests, I will also make a deposit to the local sperm bank in case Amy and I want to have another child.