41

I'm 41 years old today.

I'm hoping this year is better than last year. It was right at my 40th birthday that I started having the physical problems that culminated in the lymphoma diagnosis. I think I've seen seven different doctors in the last year, and when they asked me to describe my problem, my standard opening line for all of them was something like, "Well, I turned 40 and everything went to hell." But it really did seem that way.

A year ago, Isabel and I got a last-minute babysitter on the night of my 40th birthday (we'd already had something set up for the next night), so we went to a pub down the street. I had two beers and a buffalo chicken sandwhich, and felt like crap for two days after. I finally went to the doctor, and was diagnosed with bronchitis. A round of antibiotics. Three weeks later, the bronchitis came back. More antibiotics. A couple more weeks, still couldn't shake it, so more antibiotics. In late July, we went away with Isabel's family, and by the middle of the week, I couldn't walk up the stairs without stopping to catch my breath, so I went to a nice country doctor who took a chest x-ray and said I had pneumonia. More antibiotics. Seemed to finally take care of it.

Had my annual physical in August. Everything looked great.

Then in October, I had weird feelings in my chest. Kind of breathlessness, but I was breathing OK, if that makes sense. A tightness, you could call it. I was sent to a pulminologist. Breathing test was fine, blood oxygen test was fine. So he asked me to keep a diary for a month to keep track of when I was feeling that tightness. It became apparent pretty quickly that it happened soon after I ate, so we figured it was gastroesophogeal reflux.

So I went to a gastro guy in November. Sounded like classic GERD, based on the symptoms. We scheduled an esophogeal scope for January.

Then in December, the node near my hipbone popped up. The general practitioner thought it might be something ("That's pretty big for a lymph node"), so she sent me to a surgeon. He checked for injuries, to make sure it wasn't just a normal swollen node, and put me on antibiotics for 10 days. Didn't help, so I had the node removed and biopsied.

On January 15th, I had my esophogeal scope in the morning, and when I got home, I had the message waiting for the doctor about the diagnosis. You're pretty well caught up on what happened after that.

Birthdays haven't really meant much to me since I was a kid. Nice to have a cake and presents, but it's always been just another day. When I woke up this morning, the first thing I thought was, "Well, I guess birthdays mean something now."

So thanks for reading over the past five months or so. Keep sending positive thoughts, good wishes, and prayers that this year is better than last year.

It's starting out pretty good.