Medical Update: My September PET scan continues to show that both cancers remain stable, which is encouraging news. The one finding that needs further evaluation is a small growth in my parotid gland, a salivary gland located just in front of and below the ear.
The area showed increased metabolic activity on the PET scan, meaning it absorbed more of the radioactive tracer than surrounding tissue. While that can sometimes indicate cancer, it can also occur with benign growths or inflammation.
At this point, the thinking is that this is most likely a benign cyst or growth and is unrelated to my existing cancers. Later this month, we will take a closer look to better understand exactly what it is. For now, we are treating this as a precaution rather than assuming the worst.
I’ve learned that not every finding on a scan needs to become a crisis. We gather the information, understand what we are dealing with, and move forward. If it turns out to be something more concerning, we will pivot, make a plan, and work through it, just as we have with everything else over the past twenty-one months.
I spend a lot of time in waiting rooms these days. It has become part of my routine over the past twenty-one months. Blood draws, appointments, scans, and treatments. There is a certain familiarity to it all now. The chairs, the quiet conversations, the people looking at their phones, and the occasional nervous glance toward the door when another name is called. Everyone is there for a reason, and everyone has a story. Most of those stories we will never know.
Today, I had the opportunity to hear one of them.
I met a young man, just 23 years old, who had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. We started talking, as people sometimes do when they find themselves sharing a waiting room. There is an unspoken understanding among cancer patients. We may have different diagnoses, different treatments, and different outcomes, but we share an experience that is difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it.
What struck me about this young man wasn’t his diagnosis. It was everything he still wanted to do with his life.
We talked about his dreams. He wants to find someone to fall in love with, get married, and have children. He wants to build a family and experience all the things that come with it. These are the kinds of dreams that a 23-year-old should be thinking about. The possibilities of a life still unfolding, with so much ahead of him.
Yet here he was, sitting in a cancer center, having to think about things that most people his age never imagine facing.
He told me about his family and the support they have given him. It was clear how much that meant to him. I could hear the gratitude in his voice as he talked about the people standing beside him. I know from my own experience how important that support can be. Cancer may be happening inside one person’s body, but its reach extends far beyond the patient. Families carry their own fears, worries, and uncertainties, often while trying to remain strong for the person going through treatment.
He admitted that he was scared. How could he not be? At 23, the future is supposed to feel almost limitless. Cancer has a way of making you confront your own mortality long before you are ready. It introduces questions you never thought you would have to ask and forces you to consider possibilities you would rather ignore.
But there was something else in his voice. Determination.
He knows he is going to make it. He told me this wasn’t going to beat him. He has too much he wants to do, too much life he wants to experience, and too many dreams he isn’t willing to give up.
I admired that about him.
As I listened, I couldn’t help but think about the differences in where we are in our lives. I have been fortunate enough to experience many of the things he is still dreaming about. I found someone to love, got married, raised three sons, and watched them begin making their own way in the world. I’ve had a career, traveled, made mistakes, learned lessons, and collected more memories than I could ever count. There are still things I want to do, places I want to see, and experiences I hope to share with my family, but I have already been given so much.
At 23, he is just getting started.
That thought stayed with me. Cancer is cruel at any age, but there is something particularly difficult about seeing someone so young having to negotiate with a disease for the opportunity to live the life he has imagined. He shouldn’t have to think about whether he will get married or have children. He should be wondering where he might meet that special person, what kind of father he wants to become, or where his career might take him.
Of course, cancer doesn’t care about what is fair. It doesn’t consider our plans, our responsibilities, or the people who love us. It simply arrives, often without warning, and changes the direction of our lives.
I also thought about the word fight, something I have wrestled with throughout my own cancer journey. We often describe cancer in terms of battles, victories, and defeats. I understand why. There is comfort in believing that determination and courage can carry us through. But I have met too many courageous people to believe that surviving cancer is simply a matter of fighting hard enough. Sometimes the disease wins despite everything a person and their medical team do.
Still, I believe there is tremendous power in refusing to surrender the life you want to live to the fear of what might happen.
That is what I heard in this young man’s voice. He wasn’t pretending he wasn’t afraid. He was acknowledging his fear while refusing to let it define his future. There is a difference between believing you are invincible and choosing to remain hopeful when life has given you every reason to be afraid.
I don’t know what his journey will look like. I don’t know what challenges he will face along the way, or what the coming months will bring. I certainly can’t promise him an outcome. I know too well how unpredictable this disease and its treatment can be.
But I hope he gets everything he dreams about.
I hope one day he meets someone who makes him laugh, someone who loves him through the good days and the difficult ones. I hope he gets to stand at an altar, hold his children for the first time, and experience the beautiful chaos of raising a family. I hope he grows old enough to look back at 23 and remember this chapter as something he went through rather than something that defined his life.
Perhaps someday, many years from now, he will be sitting somewhere watching his own children begin their lives, and the memory of this waiting room will be little more than a distant reminder of how uncertain life once felt.
I hope that for him more than anything.
Our conversation was a reminder that every person sitting in those chairs carries more than a diagnosis. They carry dreams, relationships, unfinished plans, and entire futures they are hoping to experience. Some have lived long lives and are hoping for a little more time. Others are just beginning and want the chance to discover what life has in store for them.
I walked away from our conversation thinking less about cancer and more about the life waiting for him beyond it.
I may never see this young man again, but I will remember him. Not because he has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but because, at 23 years old, he sat in a waiting room, admitted he was scared, and talked about the family he hopes to have someday.
For a little while, two cancer patients at very different stages of life shared a conversation about something much bigger than the disease that brought them together.
We talked about the future, and I hope he gets to live every bit of his.
Praying for you and the young man you met.
Praying for you and the young man you met.