Diagnosis Post

Hi Friends,

This blog is my attempt to keep you all updated on my battle with Hodgkins lymphoma so we can spend time on the phone talking about other more interesting things as I walk through my cancer journey.

The basics are straightforward I was finally diagnosed yesterday with Hodgkins Lymphoma normal type, which has affected a small number of my lymph nodes in the mediasteinal region of my chest, the enlargment is small the biggest being 4.5cm. Hence this is an early stage low grade version of the cancer.

I will begin treatment next wednesday which will be three months of ABVD chemo on a 15 day cycle, at that point my consultant Dr Mackie at the Western General hospital in Edinburgh will use PET scanning to determine if I need more chemo, radio or no further treatment. This seems to be the "gold standard" for treatment of this conditon.

In many ways I am lucky, the cancer was found by chance when I was being scanned for an aorta defect which killed my father a year or so ago and has killed many of our male relatives. So it has been found at an early stage and this type of cancer has a good chance of remission and long term freedom from the disease. Mind you these "herd" statistics are not really such a big deal as what happend to me individually can be on either side of the line so we will just have to see, but for now I am pretty positive and hopeful.

The last few weeks has been consumed with tests, telling folks and making arrangements to hand over my job to colleagues until September at least. Although I hear good and bad stories about people being able to work in part through the chemo treatment my job involves a lot of international travel (I lead a manufacturing team for Gore-tex(r) Fabric Globally) so I plan to work from home occasionally to keep in touch but not to push it to much or travel. In the end my body will dictate this rather than my aspirations. The good news is colleagues and leadership in the company have been great and super supportive, another good reason why W.L.Gore is the best company to work for in the UK two years in a row.

We have been overwhelmed by offers of support from friends family and colleagues many of who do not quite know what to say so I am including in here a few tips from other people who have been through this type of journey that may help you be supportive and understand some of our reactions.

1 We really appreciate the offers of help from the family and we will take these up in rotation to help us manage through the chemo reactions with support for myself, Lee and the running of the household. Do not worry if we do not take up the offers short term this is a long run thing and we want to keep some help in reserve.

2 Friends can really help by being as normal as possible, there will be times when I want to talk out the current situation with Hodgkins but there will also be times when I want to talk about anything else, gossip, argue about politics or economics, discuss kitchens or cars etc so that this disease does not dominate all of life and suck the fun out of it. So friends can help by taking us away from this thing for a few hours and being their normal selves with us together or separatly as we all need time away. Some days will be bad days and some things will get cancelled or be too much, but I still want to try to not put life on hold.

3 Colleagues can help by covering for me when I am gone, I really appreciate that this will mean a good deal more work for some and thank you for that but take care of yourselves. Keeping me lightly involved and asking advice from time to time is a way I can stay motivated and energised about the future, but which I can drop if the bad days happen without feeling I am letting you down.

All of you can help with positive energy, prayer, good thoughts in whatever way you feel works best, I will take help from any source, our connection to family and the community of friends and colleagues is a powerful well of positive energy for us extroverts keeping it connected will really help.

Thats all for today

Gerry