Adults

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.

In November 2013, after experiencing several severe nose bleeds, I was diagnosed with a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer called Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia. It was in stage IV and I started chemotherapy treatments immediately.

In January 2016, I was diagnosed with stage II Hodgkin lymphoma. I was four months pregnant at the time, and it was decided to carry to term because this type of blood cancer is a slower spreading cancer.

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.

In 1994, at the age of 29 I was diagnosed with stage IV acute myelogenous leukemia. I was told there was a five percent chance  that I would survive. Having a husband and three kids, I was devastated!

I never thought this could happen to me, and it was a long hard fight, but I did it. 

Twenty years ago I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). My husband, Remi and I were married and just moved to Virginia, where Remi was stationed in the Navy. In the short six weeks we lived there, I never felt 100% and I was at the doctor four times in six weeks. At my last appointment, I requested that they draw my blood.