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Tag: lymphoma

  • Jack Curtis, Carleton College’s quarterback, showing that even a cancer diagnosis won’t stop him

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    Jack Curtis, Carleton College’s starting quarterback, has been diagnosed with late-Stage II unfavorable Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

    “(It was) earth-shattering, to be honest,” Jack Curtis said. “Especially being young, you hear the word cancer and immediately think the worst.”

    Early June of this year, back home in Charlotte, Jack Curtis was having heart attack-like pains.

    “The worst one happened at night,” Jack Curtis said. “I really thought I was gonna — something really bad was gonna happen.”

    Within the week, he was biopsied. A tumor the size of an egg was removed. Then chemo began. 

    Doctors said it would be practically impossible to play his senior season of football, but he’s doing it anyway. 

    “He’s like, ‘I’m going to be alright and I’m playing.’” said Carleton head football coach, Tom Journell. “I’m like, ‘Wait a second here. I just want to make sure you’re alright.’ He’s battled.” 

    The latest scans found no active lymphoma cells — a great sign — but it’s much too soon to declare victory. Jack Curtis is likely not even halfway through treatment. He gets chemotherapy every other week. 

    Still, he’s started and played in the Knights’ first two games.

    “I think the best way to put it is I feel like a Hummer,” Jack Curtis said. “I look big and strong, and I am big and strong. But I’m probably getting like four miles to the gallon. Just the amount of plays, not necessarily what happens each play. When I come back to the sideline after each drive, I have to sit down on the bench immediately, drink water. But when I’m on the field, the adrenaline helps me out.”

    His mom, Amy Curtis, feels it from Carleton’s big bleachers. The question is asked: Is there an added worry when there’s a hit?

    “Oh, 100%, 1,000%,” said Amy Curtis. “We just have to trust in him and the medical staff and then the O-line too.” 

    His offensive line and entire contingent of teammates are there to support while gaining perspective.

    “It’s almost impossible not to be inspired,” said left guard Declan Smith. “It makes you think about all the things you’re annoyed about, little things that you’re like, ‘I gotta do that today?’ It’s like, they seem a little smaller when you put them into comparison with all the things Jack’s going through.”

    This weekend is Carleton’s crosstown rivalry game with St. Olaf. The Knights are aiming to take back the Goat and Cereal Bowl trophies. Jack Curtis will barely practice, because on Monday, he was getting another round of chemo. 

    “I’ve been trying to walk that line between asking for help and not asking for too much help, because I am blessed to be able to play. I know there’s a lot of people who have cancer at much more aggressive stages,” Jack Curtis said. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” 

    Already, Jack Curtis has noticed a change in how he plays football — how and why he competes. 

    “It’s been nostalgic for me stepping on the field,” he said. “Remembering things that happened in my past games and hoping to make memories with my receivers going forward in this season. Building that memory bank, so when I’m sitting in the chemo chair, I can think of those good times and why I’m doing this.” 

    So maybe it’s less about leaving it all out there, and more about taking it all in — capturing what the field, football and life have to offer.

    Ren Clayton

    Ren Clayton joined WCCO-TV in October 2021. Ren has covered it all, from surfing, to rodeos, to hurricanes.

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    Ren Clayton

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  • Author and YouTuber Hank Green reveals cancer diagnosis

    Author and YouTuber Hank Green reveals cancer diagnosis

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    Veteran YouTuber and best-selling author Hank Green has announced that he has Hodgkin’s lymphoma. 

    “It seems likely that we caught mine early. I’m still waiting on a scan to sort of confirm that,” Green said in a YouTube video uploaded Friday. In the video description, he wrote his first treatment began “literally as this video goes live.”

    He recalled how he was diagnosed in a mostly upbeat 13-minute video titled “So I’ve got cancer,” posted to vlogbrothers, the YouTube channel he shares with his brother, novelist John Green. 

    He said it all began when he noticed his lymph nodes were swollen and his doctor sent him to get an ultrasound. 

    “The tech in the ultrasound room was like, ‘I’m going to go get a doctor,’” he recounted. “That’s not what you want to have happen.”

    Hodgkin’s lymphoma affects the lymphatic system, part of the body’s germ-fighting immune system, according to the Mayo Clinic. In Hodgkin’s lymphoma, white blood cells called lymphocytes grow out of control, causing swollen lymph nodes and growths throughout the body.

    He said that over the course of a few weeks, “this has become more and more real,” but it’s one of more treatable cancers. He said one of his friends had Hodgkin’s and went through treatment and remission. They are now 10 years post-diagnosis. 

    “It’s been really nice to have that in my back pocket,” he said. “For texting and being like, is this normal? And, am I panicking? And, please tell me I’m gonna be ok.”

    “I said, you know, ‘This is the best time, so far in human history, to get lymphoma’ — which is a very Hank Green thought,” Green said, motioning to his brother offscreen. “And then you gave me a very John Green thought — and you said, “Well, a year from now would’ve been better.’” 

    He also added that while his diagnosis might impact his work going forward, he would try to send the occasional email update. 

    “I’m playing it by ear,” Green said. “I know I’m going to feel like garbage, like it’s going to be really unpleasant.”

    “Knowing me, I’m going to still find joy in creating and communicating with people if I can,” he added. “And the easiest, lowest-lift way of doing that is probably going to be writing something down and putting it in a newsletter.”

    But he had one more thing to ask of the  fans. 

    “If you can give me ideas for movies and TV shows and video games that are not heavy at all. Like, no emotion,” he said. “So really dumb things that will not make you cry — could not make anyone cry.”

    His brother wrote in a pinned comment: “Reply with some good movie and media recommendations here. NO BUMMERS.”

    The Green brothers are also founders of VidCon, an annual event featuring digital creators and their fans. The event was acquired by then-Viacom, now Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News.

    Hank Green was slated to attend VidCon in Anaheim next month, but after his announcement, the convention released a statement on Instagram. 

    “Due to his recent diagnosis, Hank will no longer be able to attend VidCon Anaheim 2023 next month,” the Instagram post reads. “To our Co-Founder, go-to science guy, and only person on the internet who seems to understand where all the candle wax goes: we’re sending all the love from the VidCon community & beyond.”

    Michael Roppolo

    Michael Roppolo is a CBS News reporter. He covers a wide variety of topics, including science and technology, crime and justice, and disability rights.

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  • Air Force expands cancer review of nuclear missile personnel

    Air Force expands cancer review of nuclear missile personnel

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    The Air Force is expanding its review of cancers among its nuclear missile corps

    ByTARA COPP Associated Press

    February 22, 2023, 9:56 AM

    WASHINGTON — The Air Force’s review of cancers among its nuclear missile corps will include all personnel who worked on, guarded, supported or operated the nation’s ground-based warheads, Air Force Global Strike Command announced Wednesday.

    Nine officers who had worked as missileers — the airmen who launch the warheads from underground silos and control centers — at Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base were diagnosed with with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, Lt. Col. Daniel Sebeck of U.S. Space Force reported last month in a briefing obtained by The Associated Press.

    Since that briefing, more missileers and missile support crew have come forward to the AP and other media outlets to report they, too, have been diagnosed with either non-Hodgkin lymphoma or other types of cancers.

    The Air Force review will extend beyond Malmstrom to include F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming and Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Together the three bases operate 450 silos that house the nation’s arsenal of ground-based nuclear warheads carried by Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles.

    Malmstrom was one of the sensitive military locations over which a suspected Chinese spy balloon loitered as it transited the United States earlier this month.

    The “Missile Community Cancer Study,” to be conducted by the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, will look at all ICBM wings and all Air Force personnel who support the ICBM mission. It will review environmental factors at the missile bases and silos, and examine “the possibility of clusters of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma” among missileers and those who maintained, guarded and supported the bases, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command, Gen. Thomas Bussiere, said in a statement.

    The review will look at active-duty medical data and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ cancer registry data, mortality data and public cancer registries. Col. Lee Williams, the command’s surgeon general, said there was not yet a timeline for the study.

    The Air Force has also established a website to address the missileer community concerns.

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  • Military probing whether cancers linked to nuclear silo work

    Military probing whether cancers linked to nuclear silo work

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    WASHINGTON — Nine military officers who had worked decades ago at a nuclear missile base in Montana have been diagnosed with blood cancer and there are “indications” the disease may be linked to their service, according to military briefing slides obtained by The Associated Press. One of the officers has died.

    All of the officers, known as missileers, were assigned as many as 25 years ago to Malmstrom Air Force Base, home to a vast field of 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silos. The nine officers were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to a January briefing by U.S. Space Force Lt. Col. Daniel Sebeck.

    Missileers ride caged elevators deep underground into a small operations bunker encased in a thick wall of concrete and steel. They remain there sometimes for days, ready to turn the launch keys if ordered to by the president.

    “There are indications of a possible association between cancer and missile combat crew service at Malmstrom AFB,” Sebeck said in slides presented to his Space Force unit this month. The “disproportionate number of missileers presenting with cancer, specifically lymphoma” was concerning, he said.

    Sebeck declined to comment when contacted by email by the AP on Saturday, saying the slides were “predecisional.” In the slides, he said the issue was important to the Space Force because as many as 455 former missileers are now serving as Space Force officers, including at least four of the nine identified in the slides.

    In a statement to the AP, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said that “senior leaders are aware of the concerns raised about the possible association of cancer related to missile combat crew members at Malmstrom AFB.”

    Stefanek added: “The information in this briefing has been shared with the Department of the Air Force surgeon general and our medical professionals are working to gather data and understand more.”

    Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which according to the American Cancer Society affects an estimated 19 out of every 100,000 people in the U.S. annually, is a blood cancer that uses the body’s infection-fighting lymph system to spread.

    For comparison, only about 3,300 troops are based at Malmstrom at a time, and only about 400 of those are assigned either as missileers or as support for those operators. It is one of three bases in the U.S. that operate a total of 400 siloed Minutemen III ICBMs, including fields at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.

    The median age for adult non-Hodgkin lymphoma is 67, according to the National Institutes of Health. The former missileers affected are far younger. Officers are often in their 20s when they are assigned duty watch; the officer who died, who was not identified, was a Space Force officer assigned to Schreiver Space Force Base in Colorado with the rank of major, a rank typically achieved in a service member’s 30s. Two of the others are in the same Space Force unit with the rank of lieutenant colonel, which is typically reached in a service member’s early 40s.

    It’s not the first time the military has been alerted to multiple cancer cases at Malmstrom. In 2001 the Air Force Institute for Operational Health investigated the base after 14 cancers of various types were reported among missileers who had served there, including two cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

    But the review found the base was environmentally safe and that “sometimes illnesses tend to occur by chance alone.” The report lamented that the list of those diagnosed had been collected because it “perpetuates the level of concern.”

    The discovery of new cases comes as the U.S. government has shown more openness to acknowledging the environmental hazards, or toxic exposures, troops may face while serving.

    In her statement to the AP, Air Force spokeswoman Stefanek said, “We are heartbroken for all who have lost loved ones or are currently facing cancer of any kind.”

    It was not clear whether some of the nine officers identified in the January briefing slides, whose diagnoses occurred between 1997 and 2007, overlap some of the cases identified in the Air Force’s 2001 investigation. It’s also not known if there were similar reports of cancers at other nuclear silo bases or whether that is being investigated by the Air Force.

    “Missileers have always been concerned about known hazards, such as exposure to chemicals, asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls, lead and other hazardous material in the work environment,” Sebeck said in the January slides. “All missileers should be screened and tracked for the rest of their lives.”

    Last year President Joe Biden signed the PACT Act, which greatly expanded the the types of illnesses and toxic exposures that would be considered presumptive — meaning a service member or veterans would not face an uphill battle to convince the government that the injury was tied to their military service in order to received covered care.

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  • Rebirth: Cancer Reshapes Nurse’s Life, Outlook, and Career

    Rebirth: Cancer Reshapes Nurse’s Life, Outlook, and Career

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    Oct. 20, 2022 — Tawny Roeder was 23 years old and 3 months away from getting her nursing degree at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, IA, when she got a job as a training nurse. She was ready to take on the world, but first she had to clear an obstacle: She felt she lacked empathy for the patients in the oncology unit where she worked.

    “I knew no one with cancer at the time,” she says. “It hadn’t really impacted my life too much, so it was daunting to have to work with those patients.” 

    In one word, she felt “oblivious” about the struggles these patients experience. “I felt like I didn’t have the words to care for these people. It was something that scared me.”

    She was also oblivious to something far scarier that lurked in her young life. She was on the dance team at Briar Cliff, and “I should have been in the best shape of my life,” but she found her energy and wind spent too easily. 

    At home during the 2008 spring break, her mom noticed her breathing difficulty. She also began having back pain that woke her up at night.

    An X-ray showed a huge mass on her lung. Roeder got the results of a subsequent biopsy – lymphoma — over the phone, “which was awful. I was alone in my apartment.”

    Just 2 weeks after starting to care for cancer patients in her hospital, Roeder became one. She studied for her nursing exams while undergoing chemotherapy with the help of her workmates. 

    Roeder’s journey was just beginning, though. She was diagnosed with an aggressive form of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a life-threatening blood cancer. 

    “There are several patients exactly like Tawny who are on their way to living when they are hit with this deal-breaker,” says Manali Kamdar, MD, clinical director of lymphoma services for University of Colorado Medicine. The diagnosis creates “a huge break in what happens in living a normal life.”

    Roeder is one of 80,000 Americans diagnosed yearly with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the most common form of lymphoma. 

    Kamdar says Roeder’s is one of 85 different subtypes, and she emphasizes that“it is absolutely important that patients get that subtype.” Sometimes it takes several tests, she says, but it is important to establish the subtype as this may influence management of the disease.  

    Kamdar also says there are now many different treatment options. Chemotherapy with the addition of medications has been a backbone of therapy, but now there are also chemo-free treatment options as well as approaches that involve genetically modifying a patient’s own immune cells, she says. 

    “The last 3 years have seen a sea change with the number of treatments that have been approved for patients with lymphoma. What I had in my toolkit 5 years ago is nothing compared to what I have today,” she says. 

    Roeder learned quickly that her cancer was so aggressive that she would need a stem cell transplant, during whichher healthy cells werecollected and stored while she underwent high-dose chemo, and would then be put back into her body intravenously. 

    However, thistreatment was not available in Sioux City. The closest center was in Omaha, NE, about a 90-minute drive away.

    “I was absolutely terrified,” Roeder says. She and her then-boyfriend, Cody, decided to uproot from Sioux City and move to Nebraska. “We thought it might as well be a good place for us to get jobs.”

    After a monthlong stay in the hospital while she underwent intensive treatment involving chemo and stem cell therapy, she eventually returned home. She now marks Sept. 11, 2008, as her “rebirth” after the treatment. 

    The night she returned, Cory proposed to her. “That was a very great coming-home surprise,” she says. “I had tubes hanging out of me. I was bald. I’m not sure it was the most romantic moment.”

    The couple married the following May. Meanwhile, Roeder had started her nursing career in pediatrics, but “every time I would go to my oncology checkup, the doctor would say, ‘Come work for our team.’” 

    In 2011, she took her oncologist up on the offer and began working as a staff nurse in the oncology unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

    “It just kind of clicked,” she says. “This is probably why I’m still here. You sometimes have that survivor’s guilt as to why some survive and others don’t.”

    Roeder’s treatment left her unable to bear children, so she and Cody have adopted a boy and a girl. 

    Now 37, in addition to working with lymphoma patients, she also volunteers for the Lymphoma Research Foundation to raise awareness and funding to fight the disease. “I have gained a lot of friendships — people I’ve been in contact with just because of their transplants,” she says.

    Roeder, who has been cancer-free since, is now the case manager for lymphoma patients undergoing transplants. She inspires her new patients, especially those who feel alone in their disease journey. “Most are very shocked” when they hear her story, she says. “It’s really shocking for people to see that I look healthy. One hundred percent of the time it is well-received and very much appreciated.”

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  • Lansing man biked over 73,000 miles since being cancer free

    Lansing man biked over 73,000 miles since being cancer free

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    LANSING, Mich. (WILX) – A man who battled cancer is now taking his message on the road. The Lansing man biked more than 73,000 miles, that’s about three times around the world.

    Gar Watson is a cancer survivor and bicyclist. He started biking because of his cancer treatments.

    “I actually had been a couch potato for around for five years before I got this cancer, so that ended up being a wake up call and I started riding to my treatments,” said Watson.

    He rode his bike from his house to his treatments in Lansing, a 14-mile ride roundtrip.

    “My crazy riding started during my radiation treatments, which lasted three weeks.”

    Watson was being treated for stage four Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

    “I was tired,” Watson said. “I had weekly blood draws through all of this, but then all the other doctor’s appointments, I was tired of the roundtrip.”

    The cancer was nearly gone at the time of his radiation.

    “I’ve been very fortunate, very lucky, for the battle I know a lot of people go through in cancer, I got off easy.”

    But, he needed to do something to keep himself busy, so he started biking at 49 years old.

    “Cycling was a knee-jerk reaction to cancer,” Watson said. “When I started out, I was just doing trail rides on the river trail by myself.”

    Watson would go on to ride 1,000 miles each month for the rest of 2014, and a total of roughly 7,000 miles that year.

    “I logged all that stuff for every ride I did, so that’s how, that’s why I know I for the first four years I was averaging 1,000 miles a month.”

    Eight years after being declared cancer free and 73,000 miles later, Gar Watson is still hitting milestones.

    “So I have since 2014, since May or June since whenever I started riding, a little over 73,000 miles.”

    Watson said he did not have a primary care physician for a few years before noticing the back pain, which ended up being a tumor. He still regularly sees a doctor to make sure he is cancer free.

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