Well.... I Have Cancer - Beginning of Symptoms to Now (Long post alert)

"We found a large mass in your chest that we are very concerned about." That one sentence suddenly flipped my world upside down. My name is Jordan Cook and I am 21 years old. On Thursday August 3rd, 2017 I was diagnosed with Stage 2 Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Fast forward three weeks, and I am recovering from my second chemotherapy treatment. This month has been a whirlwind to say the least, but let's start the story back in June.

On June 6 after finishing my junior year at JMU, I moved to Washington D.C. to begin an internship at Booz Allen Hamilton. I was so excited to join such a prestigious company and incorporate what I had learned in school to real client-facing issues. I was put on a team of five other interns and two team leaders. The goal of the internship was to solve a real world problem your team was given and present your solution at the end of the summer. The winning team would win the Challenge Cup.

About two or three weeks into my internship, I started to notice something a little strange. Every morning I would wake up to a swollen face, primarily on the right side. My neck was also starting to get a little swollen, and my right shoulder constantly hurt. I would also wake up in the middle of the night from itchiness. I attributed this to allergies, however, because I got off my allergy shots when I moved to D.C.

After a few weeks, my allergy doctor prescribed me steroids over the phone to help with the swelling. This helped me a lot for about a week or two, but then the swelling came back. I tried everything to get the swelling to stop, but nothing seemed to work. The swelling would go away during the hour drive I had to work every day though, so I really didn't think much of it.

I continued to explore D.C. and worked 40-hour work weeks. I loved exploring on the weekends especially. I would usually walk 10-12 miles a day just taking in the sights. Even though I was exhausted, I didn't want to miss out on experiencing everything the city had to offer. After long weekends and work days though, I always just collapsed on my bed at night, too tired to do any cleaning. Or anything for that matter.

Around the middle of July I started getting a really bad cough. I began losing my voice and noticed that I couldn't take a deep breath in without coughing. Again, I attributed this to allergies. My neck was also getting a lot more swollen and sore. My face was still swelling every morning and it began staying swollen throughout the day, predominately on the right side.

On Thursday July 27th, I woke up and my eyes were just about swollen shut. I decided to call my allergy doctor in Williamsburg and make an emergency appointment for Monday since I would be presenting to my bosses the following day and didn't want to miss it. They decided they could get me in, so after work on Thursday I packed my bag for the weekend and left straight from work on Friday after my team and I practiced presenting our project to our bosses and their staff.

It was pouring down rain that day, so that added on to rush-hour traffic made for a dreadfully long ride home. What would usually take about two and a half hours took close to four and a half hours. My neck started hurting so bad on the drive home that I could hardly move it. Luckily, I was able to talk to my boyfriend Cameron and my friend Allison on the phone during the drive to help distract me from the pain.

When I got home, it was like my body instantly knew it could relax. I was able to eat dinner but then I started coughing so much I couldn't breathe. I had a temperature of 100.2 and my fingers began to swell and turn purple. I think my body had been running on adrenaline up until the point when I walked through my front door.

My parents rushed me to the emergency room where they took me back instantly because I wasn't able to breathe. We told the doctor all of my random symptoms from the past few months and she decided she wanted to do some tests. She had me back getting a chest X-Ray within the hour, and not long after she followed up with a CT scan. The results came back and they were not what we were expecting. The doctor told us they found a large mass that takes up a third of my chest that she thinks is cancer and it didn't look good. They wanted to transfer me to the larger hospital in Newport News where they could do further testing.

WELL THIS SUCKS. Obviously I began bawling my eyes out and asking for my parents to call my boyfriend to come, because who likes to hear that they probably have cancer? This was literally like WebMD gone terribly wrong. (Anyways, I digress...)

Cameron and his family came and he brought me a fuzzy blanket and Tigger Pillow Pet, and then I then took my first ever ambulance ride. They put me in the telemetry unit when we got there because that was the only place with an open bed. Since it was the weekend, there weren't very many doctors around and no one could really tell us when I would be seen. This is when the waiting game began. Luckily, I had a lot of family and friends come and visit while we were in the hospital, so that was very comforting.

***This is where my memory gets fuzzy. I don't remember hardly anything during this week in the hospital, but this is what I've learned from my parents***

I continually got worse as the waiting game went on. Saturday came and went without seeing an oncologist, but we finally got to see her on Sunday when I was transferred to the Oncology ICU. In the mean time, my face and arms were swelling like crazy to the point where I could barely move them. They had to move my IV from my arm to a femoral line so that my pain and anti-nausea medicines would flow through my body instead of pooling in my arm. I could also not eat or drink anything all weekend just in case they decided to do the biopsy.

The oncologist told us on Sunday that I would be getting my biopsy on Monday morning. On Monday, we waited until 5:00 p.m. for them to finally take me down to pre-op. Long story short, the doctors didn't play very nice with each other that night and no one reserved an operating room so I had to wait until Tuesday to get my biopsy. In the mean time, I was swelling so much that I couldn't breathe. They had to sedate me pretty much all Monday night and Tuesday morning to keep me comfortable, because they couldn't give me steroids for the swelling until after the biopsy.

On Tuesday I finally got the biopsy and they were able to get 10 samples of tissue since my tumor was so big. Wednesday they were able to give me some steroids to help with the swelling, which helped my breathing a lot. On Thursday August 3rd, we finally got the results that I had Stage 2 Hodgkins Lymphoma. This was actually the best news we could have gotten considering the circumstances. Hodgkin's Lymphoma is one of the most treatable types of cancer with a 96% cure rate.

The oncologist also told us since my tumor had grown so aggressively, it should shrink just as aggressively. I apparently have had this tumor growing inside of me for close to 3 months, which means I had it the whole time I was in D.C. The doctors were amazed that my body was able to compensate with the tumor pressing against my lungs for that long. My treatment would consist of 6 cycles of chemo, which means I would be getting a chemotherapy treatment every other week.

My first chemo treatment was the next day, Friday August 4th. I was pretty tired and exhausted during this treatment, because I had been laying in bed for a solid week at this point with hardly any food. Chemo lasted from that morning until about 6:00 in the evening since it was my first one. I slept through most of it, so I don't really remember much.

The next day, I was able to go home!! Woohoo!! I was so ready to get out of that hospital, but I was also scared to be away from all of the amazing nurses who had helped me through that week. There was a huge welcoming committee when I got home with signs, so that definitely put a smile on my face. I was very tired, so I pretty much went straight upstairs to bed and slept the rest of the day.

Sunday was my worst day by far. I woke up and was so nauseous and dizzy I couldn't stand it. I didn't have an appetite at all, and any sort of scent made me feel sick. I felt so bad, it took hours for me to even build up the strength to walk to the bathroom. By the time I got to the bathroom, I fainted from my legs hurting so much from the pain of having femoral lines in the hospital. This was a super discouraging day, because I realized that I literally have 6 more months of enduring this torture of cancer. I was struggling with thoughts like "Why is this happening to me?" "What did I do to deserve this?" "Why now, going into my senior year?" "I had my life planned out, why did God decide to rip everything from under me?"

This is when I decided that I wasn't going to let cancer beat me. I was going to beat it. This was also when I decided that God didn't give me cancer, but He will use me in this to accomplish something for His Kingdom. He has a purpose through all of this, and even though I don't know what that is right now, I am excited to find out. After taking this weight of cancer off purely my shoulders and sharing it with God, He has given me a peace of mind beyond anything I've ever felt before. 

Last week was a really good week. I was able to hang out with my family, my boyfriend, and my friends and it felt like I was back to my normal self. It was such an encouragement knowing that even though there will be bad days through this process, there will also be good days. I was even able to work with my professors at JMU and make an online schedule that I can work on while I'm home this semester. This will allow me to keep my major and minor and graduate on time.

I was much stronger after that week going into my second chemo this past Friday August 18th (pictured above). My nurse Jen made me feel so comfortable and I fell asleep for most of my treatment thanks to the Benadryl IV. After about 5 hours, my dad and I were on our way back home. I was very tired that night, but not near as bad as I was in the hospital. Yesterday and today have been pretty rough with nausea and dizziness, but I still feel much stronger than I did the last time I had chemo.

I'm hoping tomorrow I will feel much better and I will get to feeling back to my normal self.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! I promise all of my posts won't be this long :) I would especially like to thank everyone for keeping me in their thoughts and prayers during this time. I truly believe God is greater than any doctor or medicine, and your prayers have been getting me through this difficult time.

1 CYCLE DOWN, 5 MORE TO GO! LET'S DO THIS!