"Determination is helping me fight this lymphoma, and will continue to help me keep my course of treatment until I have beaten my disease."
The above is an excerpt from Brendan's personal statement for medical school. Reading it might have made me cry a little.
...he's my hero.

In one week, we have raised $810 dollars for the Lymphomathon. I won't ever be able to express enough gratitude to the people who are contributing, and especially those who have signed up to walk alongside us in August. There are infinite spots available and plenty of time to sign up and join - no donation required, just the desire to saunter in the Sunday sunshine.

The art at Swedish Covenant Hospital is chosen more carefully than at Resurrection. Artist statements accompany each painting - eliminating the subjective nature of the art itself. It reminds me how selfish art actually is.
The receptionist here speaks a loud, battered, and incomplete English - her voice carries for floors and echoes through the hospital. She's wearing yellow stripes like a bumblebee. She butchers our last name when she calls Brendan to get prepped, hollering across the room that I need to stay here, that I need to let Brendan out of my sight, until they call for family. Now I hate her. The chairs aren't very giving. The hospital is unreasonably loud. There is a lot of natural light. The artist wants me to remember we are all elements in nature.

It's Monday. Two weeks since Brendan was diagnosed with Hodgkin's. The PET scan was 5 days ago and a 3 hour tour (a 3 hour tour). Today, Dr. Agos is cutting in to Brendan's neck to remove as much tissue as he can grab without performing major surgery on the arteries, veins, and nerve bundles surrounding the cancer. One fourth of me wants to ask if I can watch. The rest is logical about how impossible that actually is - and on top of it, scared to actually see the devil. This cancer is an invisible threat - just a bump we can feel, an itch Brendan can't ever satisfy. Sometimes I forget that his blood is littered with invaders. Sometimes I forget to be afraid of it. The new silence of the waiting area makes me aware of where I am, and I have no idea how long it has been since Brendan walked off. It feels like an hour. Patience is not a quality I boast.
Finally, I hear "family of Klein!" screech through the 2nd floor waiting area and I follow instructions and a nurse toward outpatient curtain number 20.
Brendan is there, with a poofy blue hair net and footies. There is an IV stuck in his arm and an air of nervous anticipation. I don't know how he does this - he is rapidly evolving in to a hero. We talk and joke, a nurse comes over, the anesthesiologist stops by to make sure Brendan's lungs are good, and finally Dr. Agos appears. He is a big, friendly, fellow who firmly shakes both of our hands, and writes the word OKAY on Brendan's chest to make sure he cuts the correct side. I tell Brendan to be cooperative, and the anesthesiologist jokes that he always wins anyway, as he injects Brendan with his magical drug. They wheel him off. It's hard to watch him go. Hard. Hard to walk back to the waiting room.
There is a large fish tank in the waiting area - I am surprised to see a puffer fish and a tiger fish in an hospital aquarium. Watching them is hypnotic, and when I slowly press my hand to the glass near the tiger fish's striped face, he is mostly apathetic. We, the nervous families, the anxious loved ones - we wait.
A little over an hour later, Dr. Agos appears. He tells me everything went well, and that he "removed all of it". The IT is already en route to the lab, and we will know the type of Hodgkin's we are facing within a week.
It's being sent to a lab.
A significant piece of this curse is out of Brendan's neck.
It is out.
I thank him and he walks off.
The puffer fish is doing hasty laps, the tiger fish lazily floats, long fins spread wide. There is a tiny red fish with a worried face swimming frantically. The anxious boyfriend across from me starts dialing his phone, a heavy man is snoring in a chair close to mine, a man gets an undate half-way through an open heart surgery, and those asshole lymph nodes are out of my brother's neck.
They're out.

Walking 'phoma Brother

I've finally started a team for the Lymphomathon, after Brendan vowed to walk with me (if he's able). So please please please JOIN OUR TEAM!
Just click on the "my team page" link, and become a recruit.
If you live in Chicago, or just might be around August 22nd, please join the team! Having a million people out there to support my Brother (who will be in treatment by then) realistically means more than any amount of money. No donation required to join, just the willingness to strut your stuff!

We also have a Facebook page.

Lymphomathon

I'll be participating in this year's Lymphomathon in order to support my brother, and all the other folks being inhabited by The Hodge.
If anyone else out there wants to join the bandwagon, it would be pretty awesome to get a great team together for this 5K jaunt at Montrose Harbor.

Incentives may include: making funny shirts to wear while we walk (and to wear forever), health benefits of walking 5K, excellent karma, resume boosts (?), my eternal love and respect and gratitude, contributing to cure cancer, supporting a fellow who is pretty much one of the coolest people we all know while he fights the good fight to stay awesome.

Also: team name suggestions welcome.

The insurance company is taking their sweet time approving all the tests Brendan needs done. Meanwhile, on the phone today, Brendan told me about an online-store he found.

We might go to town here...

thehodgeshop.com not only has a great name, but the "original designs [are] created by Hodgkin's survivors." And, they donate a portion of the proceeds to benefit Hodgkin's Lymphoma Research.
The site was founded by a family who watched their sister go through was what is deemed the "good" cancer.

While it is comforting to read and hear about survival stories, it's hard to read about someone being told theirs is the "good" cancer (which is what we were told) and then they end up fighting an awful, and painfully long battle.

But if anyone can do this - my brother can.

Room 400

7.14.10

My little brother has cancer.

I poured too much sugar in to this styrofoam flavored coffee that the oncologist's waiting room has provided. The room is surprisingly small. Small and light blue with extremely inoffensive art(?) on the walls. The click-clock of the door knob turning is like a siren, and when it click-clocks we all turn our heads to see what or who is emerging. The nurse comes through the door and and says "Brendan?" and we look at him with the most supportive eyes we can muster. With a whispering whistle, Brendan signals to his fiance, Heather, to follow. Mom and I are left alone with the art and magazines.
Dad arrives at 2:15 for a 2:00 appointment and is irritated that we are being kept in the waiting room away from the informative doctor. Mom is equally frustrated that she wasn't chosen to accompany her son, and has resorted to breathing loud and extensively to display her discontent. I'm trying to keep them reasonable - my words are far more calm than I actually am at this point.
The room is cold. I've flipped through magazines and didn't take notice of anything within the covers.
The cancer is consuming my brother, but it has also consumed my mind. It's consuming the family. We wait in silence.
I'm worried about Brendan, because of the cancer, of course, but moreso now because I can see how scared he is. Today, sitting here in this office, I can see how scared he is.
There is nothing I can do to help him.

An hour later, the same nurse pops her head back in the room and lets us know we can join Brendan. The doctor isn't back yet, and Dad nervously asks if he is coming back to talk to all of us. When he finally comes back in he is a tall, white haired man with hippos on his tie, who only occasionally looks directly at any one of us while he explains the situation. The jist, is that Brendan caught it early - he's probably been harboring the cancer cells for only 2 years (....ONLY?!), and that he is young, and that Hodgkin's Lymphoma is the lesser of the cancer evils. Dad hurriedly inquires about treatments and time lines, and we are all told that until further tests, which will include removal of one of his infected nodes, and a PET scan, are done we can't know the extent of what it will take it wage this war. Mom bends down behind Brendan and rests her hands on his head, sliding them down to his shoulders and pressing her face in to his hair. When she stands up straight again she breathes out the breath we have all been holding for the past two days. She manages a smile, I catch Brendan's gaze. He looks at me with wide eyes that seem to probe mine for hope.
Without anymore questions for the doctor, we file out of his office, and in to the narrow hallway. The air is sprinkled with optimism as we pile in to the elevator and onward to face the heat of the July summer.

July 12th 2010:

My little brother has cancer.

I am hoping the more I write it, the more I hear myself say those words, that we will have already defeated it. I want nothing more than to steal the cancer away, let it course through my blood instead.




My little brother. He shouldn’t have to deal with this. He shouldn't have to be scared.

I spent too much time on the internet looking at lymphoma wrist bands, pins, volunteer opportunities, marathons and walks - as if getting passionate about this cause will make it leave my brother alone.
My little brother.

I'm being selfish, putting this here. It's mostly a way for me to deal with the day-to-day, to tell without telling. Maybe somehow this self-serving little blog will help another sister experience the journey - or it can just stay on the internet forever and remind me to tell my family how much I love them.