If you read this, I have cancer (again).
10 clean years after my fully cured Hodgkin’s Lymphoma from 2015, and with a healthy and active lifestyle, I got got — again. What are the blasted odds.
It started very suddenly: a little bump on my neck towards the end of August, which turned into a bigger lump, which turned into a PET CT and by that time a huge (8+cm) lump and a surgery to remove a bit of it and an aggressive form of B-cell Non-Hodgkin’s that I need to get treatment for, quickly. End goal if full cure, and there are many options on the table, the first of which is chemotherapy that I will start tomorrow (10/Oct/2025, if you are reading in the future), in a stay-in-hospital nature this time (due to the more intensive treatment I need.)
I am physically still in very fit state (did my last 100k gravel ride the day before my lymph node surgery, another 30k day before yesterday, although in retrospect doing gravel 1 week after surgery wasn’t a great idea), my blood results are still good, so a much better starting position than (and I hate to even write this down) last time. Mentally, after a natural but short despair period, I’m back in my “fuck it let’s do it” mindspace and I can’t wait to get started, prepared for all the sudden lifestyle changes this brings: the change in sleep pattern (I’m typing this at 4am, hello steroid induced insomnia), the side effects and the side effects of the medication I take for the side effects, the change in food habits and workout schedule, both coming down to disciplined/timed regimen as much as I can. I have a very supporting family and fully onboard, who I feel verry sorry for but who I know they will help me on the journey, for a second time, poor things.
As you probably know, I’m not on mainstream social media by now, but I will keep this blog updated and have created a Mastodon handle (@backinshape@mastodon.social) where I will push small updates when I don’t have mindspace for writing. This is just for my own benefit, so that I don’t have to copypaste basic info to many people. Both of these you can widely subscribe to, using the universal RSS standard (blog feed RSS | mastodon feed RSS).
(And besides this please feel free to reach out to me via known channels for a chat or whatever, it’s always good to hear from people even if maybe I won’t respond quickly – I’m not posting here to get you off my back, I’m posting to get the basic info out there.)
A bit of meta
(because we are nerds after all)
The name of the blog
comes from the name of my first such blog, backinshape.lipilee.hu. It didn’t feel right to “continue” that blog, as this is a brand new thing, but it provided an easy naming scheme, and I’ll take “easy” now if I can.
The icon of the blog
comes from Conway’s game of life, which I feel still represents my attitude towards my life, and my treatment:
If you know Conway’s Game of Life, this shape is called the Pinwheel. (If you don’t know the Game of Life, it’s too broad a topic for this post, but see the link.) It’s an oscillator that, in 4 turns, returns to it’s original shape. But more importantly, this little guy is spinning without end, which I think is a nice metaphor. You can see it in action here.