When you hear that a friend of yours has been diagnosed with cancer, you immediately refute the comment and believe it can not be true.  Especially when you saw your friend two days before the diagnosis at a bar enjoying a beer.  Maybe its a different person with your friends name?  Maybe not.

A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with Burkitt’s Lymphoma on Tuesday of this past week.  Burkitt’s is an extremely aggressive and rare form of lymphoma as it is only seen in 1% of all lymphoma cases.  One good thing about an aggressive cancer is that it responds well to chemotherapy but requires extensive doses of the drug.  This past Saturday I decided to head to Dana-Farber in Boston (one of the top cancer treatment facilities in the world) to visit my friend and his dad.  Having believed him to be in the actual Dana-Farber facility I got lost in an elevator only to be removed by a security guard and told to head to Brigham’s and Women’s next door.

Brigham’s houses a floor for cancer treatment in adults so I guess the move makes sense but how was I supposed to know that Mr. Security Guard.  Anyways, when I got to the room I was amazed by the amount of machines and alarms and instrumentation filling the room.  Once I got over that initial surprise (was it really a surprise I guess not), it was good to sit down and just shoot the shit with him and his dad.  If it is correct what they say about cancer patients being in high spirits having the highest success rates, then my buddy is all set.  We sat there laughing about all sorts of what I could only refer to as serious matters and talked about the hot interns and staff in the wing.  Watched some college football and went for a walk where whenever someone asked my buddy what he was sick with he would always refer to it as, “Man, I guess I caught the cancer.” with a smile.

I am not sure what I was expecting with all of the drugs and other IV fluids and doctors visits, but it was really interesting at the very least.  I guess I kind of expected the chemotherapy drugs to be devilish and constantly inflicting pain, but the clear drip fluid he received while we were talking was certainly not what I had imagined.  Its weird to think that a clear fluid dripped over an hour can combat cancer effectively.  Science is a pretty amazing thing and we can only hope and pray that it continues to work effectively.