My Boyfriend Was Misdiagnosed With Cancer
- Four and a half years ago,
my husband was misdiagnosed with cancer
and this is that story.
Picture this.
2012.
Things are amazing.
I had been dating Jake for about six months
and we were obsessed with each other,
as young couples are.
So we are moving in together
and it was really exciting.
Jake's mom, after a 10 year battle with cancer,
had just been given a clean bill of health.
So we were all feeling pretty good.
After maybe a week of living together,
Jake woke up one morning and was like,
"My neck hurts."
I was lying down and couldn't really see him
so I was like, "You probably just slept on it funny."
And he was like, "No.
"It feels really weird."
When I did look up,
it looked like Jake had a literal baseball
inside his neck.
Obviously we were both a little freaked out.
I called my dad right away because he's a doctor.
He's a gynecologist, but whatever.
It's all the same.
I told him Jake's symptoms and he said
"It sounds like it could be mono."
So I was like, "Okay, maybe that's it."
Jake wasn't in too much pain so we decided
to wait a day before seeing a doctor.
The next day, his neck had only increased in size.
Instead of seeing a specialist,
he decided to see whoever had the soonest appointment.
The doctor was like, "What the fuck?
"I have no idea.
"You need to go to this ear, nose, and throat specialist."
So we went and this frazzled little doctor comes in
with these magnifying glasses on his head and he's like,
"We have reason to believe this is lymphoma."
Now keep in mind, Jake's mom had literally
just recovered from the same type of cancer a week ago.
So I was just like, "Nope."
I asked the doctor if they were gonna check for mono
and he was like, "There's no way.
"There's no need.
"It can't be mono 'cause his neck is too big.
"It's 100% lymphoma."
So they did a needle biopsy right then and there
and ran it through a lab while we sat
in the waiting room.
They finally called us in and they said,
"The mass is monoclonal,
"so it's most likely lymphoma,
"we just don't know what type."
So they referred us to an oncologist at a big
New York City hospital.
Coincidentally, the same hospital Jake's mom
had just been discharged from.
The oncologist we met with agreed that it was
definitely presenting as lymphoma.
I asked again, had they checked for mono?
I was ignored.
They might have well said, "Lauren, shhh.
"The men are talking."
I was getting increasingly frustrated.
The oncologist sent us to a surgeon to get
a bigger biopsy.
The oncologist and the surgeon both agreed
at the rate Jake's neck was expanding,
it was an aggressive cancer and we needed
to get a sample right away.
Since they were in such a rush
and there wasn't any room in the OR,
they decide to do the biopsy right there
in the exam room.
The next day we came in and we expected it
to just be like a simple snip of Jake's neck.
It wasn't.
So the surgeon opened Jake's neck
while I sat there in the room for moral support.
But as he tried to get some tissue,
something went really wrong.
It was harder to get tissue from the mass than expected
and Jake was starting to bleed a lot.
For about 30 minutes the nurse held Jake's neck open
with these clamps while the doctor prodded around.
He couldn't get anything,
and at this point, we were very deep into Jake's neck.
So Jake was only under local anesthetic
and it was starting to wear off.
Now, Jake could feel everything.
The bleeding started to get so out of hand,
he needed to address that instead of getting any tissue.
Meanwhile, I was holding Jake's hand,
who was gripping it for dear life.
At one point, the doctor even had me turning knobs
on the cauterization machine 'cause
there weren't enough nurses.
And Jake's legs were twitching every time
they poked him with the cauterizer.
They finally closed Jake's neck but they didn't
get enough of a sample as they needed so it
was basically for nothing.
We scheduled a biopsy for the next day
in an actual operating room.
Luckily, this biopsy went smoothly.
Jake got to sleep through this one,
and shout out to Candy Crush for getting me
through all the waiting.
In the meantime,
since this was such an aggressive cancer,
we were scheduling Jake's first chemo appointment.
Because of that, we had to freeze some of Jake's soldiers
in case they got affected by the chemo.
Now, we were very much in love,
but at six months we were deciding who his sample
would go to if something were to happen to him.
Obviously we said me but it was a pretty
intense conversation to have so early on.
I'll say this.
If you ever wanna know if you've found the one,
just have a near-death experience.
Really clarifies things.
Shortly after the second biopsy,
Jake's neck started to expand,
but in a new, different way.
It was massive and hot to the touch.
He then got a fever.
It was probably around 100 at about 10 pm that night.
So we called, and they told us to hang tight
until the next morning.
That night did not go well.
Jake's fever kept going up through the night.
He was on a massive amount of drugs so he kept
passing out.
Every time I was like, "Let's go to the hospital,"
he'd pass out.
And then I'd check his temperature,
then I would pass out.
And this went on until the morning.
We're pretty sure he almost died that night.
We went to the hospital the next day at seven am.
By the time we were seen by the doctor,
Jake literally had two heads.
The doctor immediately opened Jake's neck
and this next part is not for the weak of stomach.
Just an explosion of pus came out of Jake's neck.
I've never seen anything like it.
It was like liquid vanilla pudding.
In the midst of this, the doctor asked if we were married.
We said we were not.
And the he told Jake,
"You'd better propose after all of this."
I actually think after you see the inside
of someone's neck enough times,
it's customary to get engaged.
So we went back home and Jake had a huge hole
in his neck and couldn't lie down 'cause it was draining
and was just totally fucked for a couple of weeks.
Later that week, Jake had a full body MRI.
They told us his body was covered in masses.
We were devastated.
We went home and waited for the final biopsy results.
They kept pushing Jake's first chemo appointment back
until they found the cell they were looking for.
This was three weeks of changing bandages,
tons of medicine,
basically full time nursing.
Sometime during the fourth week,
we decided to go out to dinner to take
our mind off of everything.
Suddenly, Jake got a call from the doctor.
He said they still hadn't found anything in the biopsy yet
which leads them to believe it's a non Hodgkin's Lymphoma,
which is far deadlier than Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
I cried into my enchiladas.
Another week or so passed and they were
running the biopsy through a second scan.
Eventually we were called in for a meeting
with the oncologist with Jake's first chemo session
looming over our heads.
Then he explained to us they didn't find any cancer cells
in the second scan, but they did find Epstein-Barr, aka,
mono.
It was a huge relief.
We had a new lease on life and Jake had a giant scar
on his neck forever.
Now, I bet you're asking yourself,
"Why didn't you sue?"
Being there in the moment, I had no doubt those doctors
were trying to save Jake's life.
They truly believed he was about to die.
It may not have gone perfectly, but,
they're human and shit happens.
No obstacle seems to big after you've been
through something like that together.
We were engaged shortly after.
When you feel so close to losing someone you love,
you just don't wanna waste any time getting
your life started.
(soft orchestral music)
