Krista’s Relapse With Hodgkin’s Lymphoma

As many of you know, my sister, Krista, was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma in March 2019. She completed 6 rounds of chemotherapy and was cancer-free in September 2019. She was able to go back to work full-time, travel to new places, and even got engaged.

But in July of this year, Krista had a routine follow-up CT scan that came back with concerning results. From July-October 2020, Krista has gone through another CT scan, a PET scan, a biopsy from a lymph node in her neck, surgery to biopsy a lymph node near her ribs, and another surgery to biopsy lung nodules and lymph nodes in and around her lungs. And this past week, after her most recent biopsy surgery, we have discovered that her cancer is back.

For this time around, treatment will look different. Krista will undergo chemotherapy in the hospital twice but for 5 consecutive days each time. After about 6-8 weeks (this includes chemo and recovery time), she will have another PET scan to determine if the chemotherapy was successful. Once in remission, she will have a stem cell transplant. We don’t know much about the transplant yet, but Krista is set to meet with another hospital this coming week to figure out the details and how long the process will take.


There are other treatment options if this particular path is unsuccessful, but we are optimistic this one will kick her cancer’s butt once and for all.


As some of you know, Krista has been working full-time as a speech therapist in a nursing home. At this point, we are not able to determine if Krista can continue to work during her treatment process especially considering how fragile her immune system will be.


We thank you all for your thoughts and prayers and we will continue to provide updates along the way.