Good Morning John,
There have been a bunch of times over the last few weeks
when this has become more and more real,
this is the big one though.
So, I noticed that my lymph nodes were big. I talked to my doctor,
she said it was probably nothing, we’ll send you in for an ultrasound.
Got an ultrasound. The tech in the
ultrasound room was like, I’m gonna go get a doctor.
(laughs)
That’s not what you want to have happen. Um, she was great, the tech
and so was the doctor. And they were like, this looks like it could be
suspicious uhh, for lymphoma and we’ll get you in for a biopsy.
And then I took the order for the surgery and like the paperwork down to the surgery office
and I like gave it to the woman in the window And she’s like ooh! Hand delivery!
And I was like, well yeah, the surgery’s tomorrow. And she’s like oh, procrastinator.
And I was like, well no, it just got scheduled just now.
And then like, foonk. Her eyes changed.
It’s like, when you’re in the American Health Care System.
You don’t expect things to move quick Like, that’s not what it, that’s not what it does
That’s not what it looks like. And when it starts to get a little bit efficient
It’s actually quite disconcerting. I’ve seen that so many times and
it doesn’t look like that! What’s happening right now.
It’s like seeing a horse that has hands. It’s just not. That’s very upsetting.
Like, its good, I’m glad everybody's taking things seriously right now.
So her eyes change,
and it’s like seeing a flight attendant on a plane that’s in the air
running down the aisle. Like, that can’t be good.
Either somebody or everybody’s having a very bad day.
Cause I don’t know all the noises a plane makes. And I don't know all the ways the healthcare
system works. But you do!
And you look like something is weird. I already knew it was weird though.
Everybody has been great and very supportive, but biopsy, uh, good news bad news.
One it’s cancer, it’s called lymphoma. It’s a cancer of the lymphatic system.
And good news, is it’s something called Hodgkin's lymphoma.
It’s the most treatable– like one of the most treatable cancers.
It responds very well to treatment. The goal is cure.
The procedure to get there is fairly well known if unpleasant.
I have a friend.
Amazingly enough, who has been through a diagnosis and treatment,
and remission and is ten years post with Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
It’s been really nice to have that in my back pocket.
For texting and being like, is this normal?
And, am I panicking? And, please tell me I’m gonna be ok.
But the treatment is fairly well established
Like, system of chemotherapies. Which I’m gonna start very soon.
Um, not looking forward to it, I’m looking forward to starting on the path.
Yeah, prognosis is very good for people with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
It seems likely that we caught mine early.
I’m still waiting on a scan to sort of confirm that.
But even when it’s not super early. Even when it's in multiple parts of the body.
Hodgkins is super treatable like solid mass tumors.
Like lung cancer, prostate cancer.
To figure out how to live somewhere else in the body is like a really big leap for them.
It means that they’ve changed and they’ve evolved
and they’ve got like a bunch of new strategies for survival which is why
metastasis in solid cancers is a really big deal.
This is a blood cancer so it’s a cancer of the immune cells–
the lymphocytes and so they are already all over the body.
Other parts of the body are like hey-yo.
You’re fine here.
Whereas like, prostate cells in the lungs would normally get attacked.
And so prostate cancer cells in the lungs
Means that they’ve developed a whole set of new strategies.
Lymphoma cells don't have to do that so it doesn’t mean something super bad
if lymphoma cells have spread. It’s worse, for clarity.
But it’s not the same giant gap between like stage 1 and stage 4
with lymphoma as it is with solid mass tumors.
Anyway, I have a bunch of risk factors for lymphoma including medications I’ve taken,
including the fact that I have an autoimmune disease,
including the fact that I had mono when I was a kid.
All of these are risk factors.
So it was something that I was looking out
for and have been aware of. I’m glad everyone took it seriously
and we got a diagnosis pretty quick. I said this to you already John.
I said, you know this is the best time, so far in human history to get lymphoma.
Which is a very Hank Green thought and then you gave me a very John Green though
and you said– Well, a year from now would’ve been better.
So I’m gonna to talk about this in a weird way now
and I don't’ want you to think that I’m not processing this in a deeper sort
of more emotional way. Or, with regards to my personal life.
It’s just that I really don’t wanna do that here right now.
Cause it’s very heavy to talk about the diagnosis from those perspectives.
But I do feel comfortable and ready to talk publicly about it in terms of
my work whatever that is, which is important.
One of the things that I’ve noticed about this is that there are practicalities.
And this is also true of like any big unpleasantness in a life.
That there's like logistics to take care of. And so I’ve been dealing with a lot of logistics.
Like, who do you tell, how do you tell em. What are we going to do about different things
that I'm working on.
So I’ve talked to a few friends who have been through various different cancers
and cancer treatment and one of the things that they all said is this is your job now.
Do this one day at a time.
Don’t have obligations.
You can have things that you can do if you want to that day.
And it’s good to have those things because depression and anxiety
are a big part of this
and I’m not a person who’s struggled a lot with that but I have seen first hand
now how intricately linked those things can be.
And the call of just lay in bed and feel bad umm, is very strong.
And even though I don’t feel bad at all right now
except some soreness cause of the biopsy and maybe because my lymph nodes are big.
I don’t feel any symptoms of this. I feel fine.
I don’t even really feel fatigued. It’s hard to tell.
I feel stressed. But the moment I start chemo,
I’m gonna feel a lot of symptoms from that. And that’s gonna be like…
just dealing with that is gonna be a lot. And you’re not gonna be good at stuff.
You're not gonna be good at stuff. Like, don’t expect to do your life.
So basically what that means is like, what am I gonna make?
I don’t know. Am I gonna make Vlogbrothers videos,
am I gonna make Dear Hank and John, am I gonna make SciShow,
am I gonna make Tangents. I don’t know, I don’t know,
I don’t know, I don’t know. Playing by ear.
I know that I’m gonna feel like garbage. Like, it’s gonna be really unpleasant.
You know, chemo is intentionally poisoning your body so that the super hungry cells
get poisoned more and die.
And that’s, that’s how it works. And it works well,
but like, you–you’ve gotta put a lot of poison in you.
One of the lovely things about my experience
of my colleagues and this community. Nobody’s gonna expect me to do anything.
Nobody’s gonna be expecting things from me. Now, I do operate off of obligation
and so I do want some reasons to get outta bed.
And I’m gonna try to set some of those up for me.
But I’m much more worried about me putting too much pressure on me
to do things or worry about things.
So that’s gonna be something that I have to get better at.
You can see this probably more in my actions than my words,
but I’m a very driven person and I take obligations, like I hold them very seriously,
and they weigh on me a lot.
And causes a lot of stress when there’s like space between what I feel
I should get done and what I feel capable of,
what I am capable of what I’m doing.
So that’s one of my big worries. I’m just saying it outloud for
myself mostly. But also to say.
I hope you are down with me making stuff when I feel like it cause I love it.
And like, I need to be doing things when I feel up for it.
And also, I know that you’ll be fine with me taking breaks.
And you know, I don-like, you know.
I have no idea.
It’s not gonna be less than four months of chemo.
Another thing I’m worried about that’s not a big deal,
and I know it’s silly, but I’m wrestling with the reality
that this is now part of how people are gonna imagine me.
Um… it’s like uh, an identity that I’m having thrust upon me,
which happens to people all the time.
And is totally a thing that I will get over,
but I do like, I do just kinda wanna say it outloud.
That I wanna be fun, goofy science guy.
Not like, struggling with anxiety cancer guy. (laughs)
And like, you know… you can be both.
And so I think I just have to let that go.
Cause it’s just one more thing that
I’m not in control of which is a lot of things.
Like there are things that you have absolute control over–very few.
And then there’s like a spectrum all the way to
you have no control. But now there’s this spectrum of things
I have no control over. And I’m struggling with that.
That’s hard.
That’s like a thing to grieve.
And my last lesson since I have you there is all of the time
I have ever spent investing in friendships
and even when they have been hard to try and keep them strong.
And even when I have been busy to try and spend time with
them has been joyful in the moment and wise in the long term.
I’ve really needed friends in the last few weeks,
and I’ve been very lucky to have them. I’ve been very lucky to have great friends
and family around to joke with
and to hang with and to support me and to give me the good vibes.
And now, I have requests if you can believe it. My requests are, one,
I do not need health care advice. I’m being very well taken care of.
And there are a lot of different ways and a lot of different things that are
very helpful to a lot of different people.
I have that in people suggesting things to me in my world of friends and acquaintances.
This is too big of a group for that. I think I would be overwhelmed.
And more broadly more non-mainstream ways to deal with cancer and to fight cancer itself.
I’m not– I find that to of course be well meaning,
but uh, confusing and distracting, and uh, not for me.
Second, I’m not really a like, let’s fight this thing together kind of guy.
I think that the prognosis for illness is mostly down to good science,
good healthcare, good outlook, good attitude, and like, chance.
Like it’s too much of it,
much more of it than we would like to think comes down to chance.
And I just feel very grateful to all of the people who have spent their
careers studying disease and cancer, and lymphoma and Hodgkins’s specifically.
Which, if you could believe this, was originally thought to be a
form of tuberculosis when it was first discovered in the early 1900’s.
It’s not!
But they thought it was.
So it all comes back everything is tuberculosis John.
All of this is to say, I don't need there to be a big thing about it.
I just want y’all to know where I’m at.
And what’s going on. Now at the same time,
I do understand that people are gonna wanna do something.
And I have requests.
I do have things that I would like from you. Here are two things that you can do.
First, if you haven’t, you can sign up for our newsletter.
I think, knowing me,
I’m going to still find joy in creating and communicating with people if I can.
And the easiest lowest lift way of doing that is probably going to be writing something down,
and putting it in a newsletter.
And so if I still want that,
but I’m not feeling up to making videos and podcasts.
That would be a nice thing to be able to have. So you can sign up for that,
it’s the top thing in the description. And I'd appreciate that.
Second, if you can give me ideas for movies and TV shows and video games
that are not heavy at all. Like, no emotion.
I go watch the Dungeons and Dragons movie cause I think that’s gonna be a fun time.
And not all of the themes were restful for me. I have to say. So really dumb things
that will not make you cry. Could not make anyone cry.
Cause I’ve been told that I’m gonna have some time to consume media.
And I desperately need to be distracted. As you can tell, I’m fine, but I’m not fine.
And, it sucks. Like I know that this sucks most for me,
but I also know that it sucks for everybody, uh, in this community.
So, I feel like apologizing but that would be stupid.
So I’m not going to.
But I think you know what I mean.
I just want to recognize that it sucks. So thanks
I hope this isn’t my last Vlogbrothers video
for four months or whatever. If it is, it is.
I dont’ wanna put pressure on me.
John will probably take some time off because it’s probably a little weird
to post just him on the channel.
But we’ll play it by ear.
We’ll figure it out as we go.
One day at a time.
And I continue to be extraordinarily
grateful for so many things in my life including this.
And John, I’ll see you on Tuesday.