The diagnosis

He was hurting, he had a lump in his neck, chest pains, night sweats, and felt so uneasy that he couldn’t hold down a meal. He went to see a doctor but he already knew what it was.

“We came home from the hospital that day and I got a call and I knew there was something wrong,” Jack said. “I gave my dad the phone, my mom went upstairs for awhile, and that’s when they told me.”

Eighteen-year-old senior Jack Gardner was diagnosed with Classic Hodgkin’s Lymphoma stage 3B cancer in early December. His life ever since has been put on pause.

“There was actually a sigh of relief to finally figure out what was going on and to be able to get started on the figuring out how to fix it,” Jack said. “And then just a lot of shock hit me, I just kind of sat there, thinking.”

Most of Jack’s siblings took the news very similar to the rest of the family. They were upset but actually relieved that Jack finally had a direction to go in. However, Jack’s youngest sibling, Donovan, reacted a little different. He immediately started worrying for his older brother’s health and well-being.

“I think Jack’s younger brother was very nervous and scared because when you’re 12 you don’t really know what that means,” Jack’s mom Cathy said. “You just hear the word cancer and that’s very scary.”

Jack has Classic Hodgkin’s Lymphoma stage 3B, the “b” meaning that he had symptoms before his diagnosis. Stage 3 means that the cancer is both above and below his diaphragm, stage 2 would just be above. The cancer is located in his neck, lower back, stomach, and clavicle. Jack was also chosen to be a part of a new clinical trial that used a different type of chemotherapy drug. It is supposed to erase the long term effects and lessen the harshness of the symptoms. They asked the doctors how long it would take for him to beat it, they were surprised by the answer.

“You hear about kids that have cancer and it’s years of battle but then mine would only take 4-6 months is what they determined,” Jack said. “And it’s just that the type of cancer that I was diagnosed with is so well known and so well studied that they knew how to treat it and what works best.”