A lot of people have reached out about my sudden cancer diagnosis, and these last couple of months have been nothing but questions and lots of doctor appointments.

In early September, I hit my nose at work and chalked it up to just a normal bump and bruise. As time went on, a black and blue mark turned me basically into looking like Sloth. The top of my nose was swelling, and my right eye started to drop along with double vision. I went to an urgent care on September 24th, and after some tests, they basically said I needed to go to an emergency room. I decided to go to Virtua Marlton, and after a few CT scans with and without contrast, they told me I needed to go to one of the larger hospitals to streamline my care because the scans were showing cloudy images across my eyebrow line and under my right eye.

So from there, I went to UPENN, and I was immediately admitted into the hospital. They ran a million more scans and bloodwork, which led to a biopsy through my nose to remove a piece of tumor/growth. I was finally able to go home on Sept. 26th to await results from the biopsy. From that point on, I’ve had multiple appointments with eye specialists, nose specialists, head and neck specialists, and neurosurgeons over the past two months, waiting for a final diagnosis. They had told me it was “definitely cancer” but couldn’t tell me what kind or what the treatment plan was until further tests.

So finally, on November 8th, the genetic testing came back with SNEC (sinonasal neuroendocrine carcinoma). SNEC is a rare and aggressive cancer that middle-aged people get, and no one knows why apparently. The oncologist who I was seeing urged me to immediately head to the ER again to fast-track my care and get my first round of chemotherapy. Then after waiting about 60 hours in the ER, I was able to finally get a bed on the 11th and was able to get my first round of chemo, which was 4 days in a row. Finally, I was able to head home, and they set me up with my treatment plan of 3 days of chemo every 2 weeks. I felt pretty good after the first round of chemo, just a little nausea and no energy at all.

Please keep all the thoughts and prayers coming. All the support from people dropping stuff off or gift cards to ShopRite coming in the mail has been amazing.