Original E-mail

*******Original e-mail*********

In order to notify as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, I thought I would send out an e-mail, in lieu of trying to call everyone.

For some of you, this will be the first time you're hearing of this. I apologize. Christina has been feeling ill for almost 3 months now, with a wide variety of symptoms (body aches, stomach pain, gum infection and others), and she would feel good sometimes and bad sometimes. Finally, after a CT scan and blood tests on 12/30, they found that she had a "mass" in her abdominal cavity (area behind her abdomen) and low platelet and red blood cell levels. She had a biopsy of the mass last Friday and bone marrow biopsy on Monday. We got the results from these yesterday, and had a consultation with the Oncologist last night. I don't have all of my notes with me, so some of this will not be exact. She has been diagnosed with Follicular Lymphoma, which is a low-grade Lymphoma.


At this point, her treatments will be a combination of a medication called Rituxan and chemotherapy. This treatment will probably begin either later this week or first thing next week. The treatments will be something like: 1st day - Rituxan, 2nd, 3rd and 4th day - chemotherapy. This will then be repeated in 3-4 weeks and she will probably require 3-4 treatment cycles. The doctors have all said that Lymphoma is "very treatable".


For those interested, her doctors are: John A. Hersman and Jonathan C. Britell of Southlake Clinic, who will be reviewing her treatments with John M. Pagel, an assistant professor of Medicine, in the UW Division of Oncology and an assistant member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. That's about it for now. Thank you so much for all of your phone calls and thoughts and prayers. Please be patient with us (me). I'm trying to keep people informed as we learn more. As you all know, Christina has A LOT of good friends, and caring family, so I'm doing the best I can.


Thanks, Ken