Lymphoma

Three months into my husband’s yearlong deployment to South Korea, Captain Matthew Marggraf started noticing a painless lump forming on the side his neck. Thinking it was just his body adjusting to its new environment he thought nothing of it. When he visited home for two short weeks for our wedding and honeymoon in October we noticed the now golf ball sized lump.

Four years ago, 53-year-old Doug was getting ready to walk in his son's wedding, but he had been recently diagnosed with gastric lymphoma and was worried about his future.

My son Max was diagnosed with B-cell lymphoma in May 2017, just 10 days before his 19th birthday. He discovered a lump under his chin a few months before, and in April he noticed it had grown. After we took him to get it checked out and learned the devastating news, we were in complete shock. He had no other signs of anything else being wrong.

My grandpa was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma (NHL) in 2007. It turned our world upside-down. You always hear these stories of families going through the motions of this disease but never personalize it until it actually happens to someone you love.

In 2014, I was diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma, one of the most aggressive of all blood cancers and without quick action I would have had only 90 days to live. That was three years ago.

Monica was learning how to be a new mom to a six-month-old baby when her night sweats got worse and worse. She also seemed to have a cough that would not go away. It turns out that her symptoms were not due to the daycare bugs her daughter brought home. In April 2017, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.