After looking at everything for a little while, he offered his current 80% hunch: Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The other 20% side of the hunch goes to some sort of currently undetected infection.

He described Hodgkin’s as being quite curable, usually after weeks or months of chemotherapy and sometimes radiation. But before doing anything like that, we first need to find out if the hunch is correct.

The prime way to find out if it’s lymphoma is to biopsy lymph nodes and bone marrow. The bone marrow is no trouble, as hip bones are nice and accessible. If he doesn’t find any cancer in the bone marrow, the next step would be to biopsy one of those abdominal lymph nodes. This gets problematic; my spleen is massive, and is in the way.

He might have to remove it.

First things first, I headed to the lab and have them perform an entire page full of blood tests. Then, in preparation for the possible removal of my spleen, I got some vaccinations for infections that can hit the spleenless hard.

Tomorrow the doctor will be in during his lunch hour to give me a bone marrow biopsy. I can hardly wait!