Lymphoma question

[orriskitten]

My grandma's cousin was just diagnosed with b cell lymphoma. Grandma thinks it is early stages and she knows it is not likely to be fatal, but can someone tell me about it? I'm assuming chemo but any other treatments? The cousin has pretty bad MS.

Can someone tag or resident cancer expert, therealmc, for me? I know you had a different type, but are you familiar with b cell? (sorry if that is a dumb question or if I got it wrong. I know very little about lymphoma)

[mrsjaymay]

I agree with therealmc that there are many different kinds of the b-cell. My aunt had diffuse large b-cell lymphoma and it was very aggressive in her. Unfortunately she only survived about 6 months after her diagnosis. I hope your grandma's cousin's cancer can respond quickly to treatments. I'm sorry your family is facing this.

ETA: She did have lots of chemotherapy, but she was plagued with other issues that kept interfering with treatment (blood clots, etc). She was set to have a stem cell transplant by she passed before she got to that.

[jfh]

My mom had non-Hodgkins but I don't know more about it than that. It had spread to a bunch of different places. Her regimen was CHOP plus retuxin (sp?) for about 5 months, no radiation. I think it was 6 or 8 treatments within that timeframe. The early treatments were long, like 8 hours, but they got a lot shorter after that. She felt horrible, horrible, horrible right after a treatment, then felt progressively better (but never great) until the next one. She's now been cancer-free for 10 years (!!).

I'm so sorry to hear the news and I hope everything goes well. It's a life-changer.

[orriskitten]

Thanks. We'll see what more info we can get from the family. I never met this cousin so it is not hitting hard, but it is hard on her immediate family who we are close to.

[sno&2peas]

There are like 30 different types of Non hodge and 4 I think of hodge. I had Primary Mediastinal Diffuse Large B cell lymphoma (that's a subtype of Diffuse Large B cell- the most common type of NHL). Mine falls in line with Hodgkins nodular sclerosising in how it presents and how it usually takes to chemo/ rads etc. Highly aggressive and most of the time curable. I was stage 2B (One huge chest tumor with nothing below diaphram with b symptoms- weight loss, night sweats etc.) It really depends on the type of lymphoma but usually some chemo, radiation are normal, sometimes transplant if needed (autologeous- which is your own cells and like 10 months worth of chemo given in like 6 days- that's an example of what I went through), if it's bad enough also donor bone marrow/ stem cells/ cord blood whatever matches can be used too. I'm assuming though at least some line of chemo like CHOP + rituxan first though (CHOP makes you feel like you have the worst flu ever and you unfortunately lose your hair). I can add more but there is a lot to talk about. How old is she? If it's aggressive and B type it has a better cure rate than T type, also if it aggressive it can be cured vs just continuously treated if it's a low grade but people with low grade can live 20 years with minimal tx. That's odd about the MS (my mom's sister has MS) there seems to be a genetic weakness in families with autoimmune diseases. ohh and I'm 10 years out cured in October <:
I wish her well!