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Patient Story |
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Art Ritter Glen Allen, VA United States male Living with Hodgkin Lymphoma for 7 years, 9 months Age: 58 I’ve always been pretty healthy and taken good health for granted, while trying to live a moderately healthy lifestyle. So it was a real shock when, after going to my doctor for a weird chest pain in April 2002 and getting an x-ray, I was told that I had a large mass in my chest. For about 10 seconds I could not say a word but just stared at the X-Ray. I got a CT scan, which would give them a finite idea of exactly what the mass looked like and where it was. When I got back from vacation, 10 days after the scan, I was told to see an oncologist. Lymphoma was suspected, and a biopsy was needed to determine exactly what they were dealing with. At age 50, I had never anticipated having cancer at that point in my life, but I decided that day that I would fight it, defeat it, and live, no matter what it turned out to be. There was no doubt in my mind of this. That night, I wrote a statement on a piece of paper and taped it to our bathroom mirror: “I am a warrior, and I will defeat this thing that is attempting to kill me. Carpe Deum!” A few weeks later, the biopsy confirmed Hodgkin’s lymphoma, lethal a few decades ago but now one of the most curable cancers. Several of the non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas cannot currently be cured, and my wife Mary and I were very grateful that I had the Hodgkin’s variety. Someone hearing us shout for joy in the car on the way home about having this type of cancer would have thought that we were nuts! I started chemotherapy within 2 weeks of the biopsy results. It consisted of 36 treatments of 4 nasty drugs spread out over 6 months. I was told that even though the lymphoma had spread from the chest to the abdomen and was considered stage 3 (of 4 stages); I had an 80% chance of recovery, which is outstanding when you are talking cancer. The treatments were rigorous and made me feel very ill over long periods of time, but they saved my life and were tolerable if you take life a day at a time instead of thinking “6 months!” After three months, one of the drugs was causing lung damage and I ended up in the hospital seriously ill. That drug was discontinued because the pulmonary doctor felt that further doses would result in me being a pulmonary cripple or dead. The oncologist felt that enough progress had been made that finishing with only three drugs would eliminate the estimated 10-20% of the tumor that remained. I finished the chemo 3 months later, and a CT scan confirmed that the tumors were gone. Our lives slowly returned to normal. During chemo, I tried to maintain a good diet to the extent my stomach allowed and I tried to walk for exercise whenever I was able. I am fortunate that the lung damage was caught in time so that it was largely reversed within a few months. I have now been in remission since December 2002. I completed the Midnight Sun Marathon in Alaska in June 2005 as part of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training to raise money for LLS programs. I look on this as some serious “giving back for what I received” and as proof that we cannot only survive cancer, but we can also be strong and accomplish difficult challenges. I am starting training for the 2006 San Diego Marathon for the same cause. Although I felt physically awful a lot during the treatment, I did not feel angry or devastated about having cancer. I tried to look on it as the luck of the draw, an obstacle to overcome, and an opportunity to grow and become stronger. It has made me appreciate life even more than I did before and also to have more empathy for ill people and what they go through. It made me want to do something to help others afflicted by cancers. Although I hope never to be out of remission and go through this again, being a cancer survivor is part of who I am and I feel it was a positive influence on my life. It made me grateful for so many things, then and now. |
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