What I wish I knew before I heard the words Leukemia Lymphoma

Before cancer became part of my vocabulary, part of my identity, part of my day-to-day reality… I thought I understood the basics.

I knew cancer was scary.

I knew it could be serious.

I knew people fought hard — and that many survived because they had to.

But there’s a vast distance between knowing cancer as a concept…

and hearing the words “Lymphoma” or “Leukemia” spoken about you.

Before diagnosis, here’s what I believed:

I believed life was predictable enough.

Hard? Yes. Messy? Absolutely.

But I believed there were warning signs before something big happened.

That major life-threatening crises came with clear, dramatic signals.

I know now: sometimes they come randomly and said to you in a customer’s parking lot in Berlin, NJ (40 minutes from home) when you feel you already have enough on your plate.

I believed I could manage anything if I pushed hard enough. I was going to just own it all myself and do the hard things and not bother anyone else in the process. Then I was forced on disability and couldn’t drive, which totally shocked the heck out of me and took all my independence.

I’ve always been the strong one. The helper. The doer. The leader. If something went wrong, I worked more, gave more, showed up bigger, offered a ride. I never gave up.

But there are storms you cannot outwork or work at all through alone.

I believed doctors always knew the right thing to do in every situation.

If tests were normal, I must be fine.

If someone in a white coat wasn’t worried, I shouldn’t be either.

Then swollen lymph nodes, extreme pain, calcium spikes, and exhaustion turned into biopsies and scans and eventually surgery.

Answers came late. Urgency came fast.

I believed sickness looked like sickness.

That people with cancer all appeared weak or frail or visibly unwell.

But I looked like myself minus a little extra weight.

I smiled like myself.

Was achieving, contributing, thriving.

Cancer doesn’t always announce itself.

I believed my body would always “bounce back.”

Any symptom? Just stress. Just autoimmune stuff. Just life. I could eat clean and battle this and get help with a nutritionist.

But the body has limits — and mine finally raised a flare that involved excruciating pain that I couldn’t ignore.

Then the words arrived.

“Ricters transformation.”

“Stage 4 Aggressive Lymphoma.”

“Brain effected, bone holes, tumors”.

“Leukemia and Lymphoma”

Blows that didn’t feel real.

Like it was being spoken in a room I wasn’t fully in.

Everything I thought I understood about life shifted in seconds:

Predictability? Gone.

Control? Rewritten.

Invincibility? A myth.

What matters most? Crystal clear.

So what do I know now?

I know we are all one phone call away from a new chapter.

I know strength is not the absence of fear — it’s continuing anyway.

I know our bodies whisper long before they scream.

I know that the people who show up — in big and tiny ways — are everything. When I’m better, I will also be more connected and empathetic.

And most importantly…

I know that a diagnosis is not the end.

It is a transformation.

A fierce awakening.

A call to rise.

A reminder that purpose still burns — even when the body is shaken.

Project Spark was born here — in the space between who I was and who I’m becoming.

Because when life says, “This changes everything,” we get to respond:

“So will I.”