I was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma, but I never thought the StarCraft community would send me so much support through this.

As someone who just passed the 5-year cancer free mark for Hodgkin's Lymphoma, I hope it all goes smoothly for you! I did ABVD and then radiation for Stage 2a, and I personally started playing WoW while I was taking treatment, and it's hard to understate how much value a community of people online has to someone that can't go outside during treatment! (Sadly, SC2 came out just under a year after I did treatment, so there was no chance to play it.)

And here is some unsolicited advice that I give everyone that has to do treatment:

  1. Get yourself some strong flavored treats to bring with you to chemo. You may not hate the taste of heparin yet, but you will. I personally used Raspberry-filled chocolate bars to mask the taste of the heparin.

  2. Biotene mouthwash will save your sanity. Use it when the mouth sores come, and it makes them stop hurting for about an hour or so. Then just rinse your mouth again!

  3. Buy some kool-aid, the kind where you just add water. When you have to take Barium Sulfate (Redicat) for CT scans, add some to it. It masks the terrible taste and makes it so much easier to handle!

  4. If you have to do radiation and they make a mask of you, make sure you ask to keep it! You can scare the crap out of people with on Halloween!

Seriously, though, good luck. If you need any information or just want to chat, feel free to hit me up. I had the exact same cancer, it looks like the same treatment, and I, too got hit with it in my last year of college. I had the (dubious) "advantage" of having gone through watching my dad be treated for another blood cancer, Leukemia. While it was sucky, it at least prepared me for what I was going to do. So if I can help you in anyway with that, I would love to.

Best wishes!

/r/starcraft Thread