Lymphoma Living with Lymphoma

One Doctor's Struggle With Cancer

Dr. Brian Stabler knows all about the stress that accompanies serious illness. As a professor of psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine, Stabler has spent years studying the relationship between psychological attitude and chronic stress, and has focused primarily on those struggling with disease.

But twelve years ago, the table was turned, and Stabler found himself in the unenviable position of studying himself. In 1990, he was diagnosed with low-grade B cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer that attacks the body's immune system.

Since that time, Dr. Stabler has undergone a series of different treatments. The last, a molecularly targeted drug, has led him into a full remission. He has been in full remission now for four years. Below, Dr. Stabler describes his struggle with cancer treatment, and some of the important lessons he learned along the way.

Learning the News, or Drenched with Cold Water
Like a lot of people before diagnosis, I had symptoms of one kind or another. I was fatigued. I had night sweats. I was losing some weight. I felt as if I had a flu, sometimes for months on end. This went on for maybe a year. Then one day I was flying back from a business trip, and I literally couldn't breathe. I couldn't draw air, and I thought I was drowning up there at 36,000 feet and that's the first time I ever remember being really scared in my life. Not long after that, I had a chest x-ray, and my doctor called me at home. He said, "Brian, I have some good news and some bad news. It looks like you have lymphoma."

I can remember the physical feeling of being drenched by cold water, and I continued to talk to him, walking around the room, pacing, asking questions like, "Do you use chemotherapy? Do you use radiation? Will it go away by itself? What am I going to do? Oh my God, I'm going to die." That's what I was doing on the phone with my doctor, doing everything wrong.

The good news was that lymphoma can be treated, but I didn't hear that at the beginning.

Watch and Wait?
The first thing that was suggested to me after the diagnosis was to "watch and wait". By that they meant, "Do nothing to see how this disease progresses, and if it gets bad, we'll do something."

And I remember thinking, "This is not good." I don't like the idea of having a disease like cancer, being told that I've got this life-threatening disease, and then being told in the next breath, "Well, maybe we'll just leave it alone for a while." It did not make sense. It did not compute.

Shortly after I began the watch and wait approach, my own anxiety was getting to the point that I needed to do something. I was saved a week later, when I discovered a node in my groin area. I informed my oncologist, literally that hour, and we started to think, "Let's do something. Let's intervene here."

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