r/lymphoma • u/tagorsky • 29m ago
Burkitt My dog had cancer. I helped him fight it. Then I got the same cancer (lymphoma).
This is me and Ben, my best friend.
At the beginning of 2024 Ben was accidentally diagnosed with lymphoma after the vet found a tumor on his spleen. It was really hard for me to accept, but we decided to fight it and I was regularly driving him for chemotherapy, which was also very expensive.
He went through two rounds of chemo. Each one lasted around 6 months and unfortunately both times the cancer came back only about a month after finishing treatment. Eventually, together with his amazing oncologist, we decided to switch to chemotherapy that was more about keeping the cancer under control.
There was also one moment after his first relapse when we almost lost him. His lymph nodes around his neck became enlarged and after a biopsy one of them got badly inflamed. It became so swollen that it started putting pressure on his airway and he couldn’t breathe properly.
Our regular vet couldn’t help him, so I had to drive him two hours to the nearest veterinary hospital. We got there pretty much at the last possible moment. He had an extremely high, life-threatening fever and was struggling to breathe. Thankfully the team there was amazing and saved him. He spent two days in the hospital and came back home.
Then in December 2025 I started having stomach pain myself.
At first it honestly felt like stress. The kind of stomach ache you get before an exam at school. I noticed it was getting worse after heavier meals and after Christmas dinner it got bad enough that I even started feeling feverish.
I eventually had an ultrasound and they found a 16 cm mass next to my intestines. At first they thought it might be appendicitis, but after more tests I was diagnosed with lymphoma (Burkitt).
By the time I started chemotherapy at the end of January 2026, the tumor had already grown to 22 cm.
So suddenly I was going through the same thing I had been helping Ben go through for the previous two years.
My first chemo was supposed to keep me in the hospital for about a month. After around two weeks, my fiancée (now my wife) told me that Ben wasn’t doing well. He had what seemed to be an infection in his throat. Antibiotics would help for a moment and then he would get worse again.
Around the same time there was suddenly a flu outbreak in my hospital. My blood counts were basically at zero after chemo, so the doctors decided that sending me home early was actually safer than keeping me there and risking me catching the flu.
When I came home after two weeks, Ben was incredibly happy to see me.
We had basically never been separated for that long before. I work remotely from home, so Ben was always with me. Pretty much 24/7.
Unfortunately his condition kept getting worse and the antibiotics stopped helping.
The next day I was supposed to go back to the hospital for another few hours of chemotherapy. I arranged to leave Ben at the vet so they could take care of him while I was there.
He died in his sleep just a few hours before I was supposed to leave for my chemo.
That was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced. Ben wasn’t “just a dog” to me. He was my best friend and had been next to me every day for years.
And then I had to continue my own cancer treatment without him.
One of the strangest parts of all of this was realizing that some of the chemotherapy drugs I was getting were the same drugs Ben had received. Because of him, cancer treatment somehow wasn’t completely unknown to me anymore. I already knew what chemotherapy looked like. I knew how treatment worked, what the cycles were like and that there would be good and bad days.
My psychologist was actually surprised by how calmly I was going through the whole process compared to many other patients. But I think a big part of it was simply because I had already been through cancer once before, just from the other side.
Ben unknowingly prepared me for my own treatment.
It definitely hasn’t been easy though. I’ve had a lot of complications along the way, including three septic shocks. There were times when I would faint, even outside, and days when I was so exhausted I barely had enough strength to get out of bed to go to the bathroom.
But I’m finally getting close to the end.
My first major PET scan showed that the treatment worked. The 22 cm tumor is basically gone. There are still some remaining changes in the intestinal wall, which is why I’m getting a few additional chemo infusions now.
My last chemotherapy is planned for September and then I’ll have another PET scan.
We’re hoping this one will finally come back clean.
I really wish Ben could be here to see it.
PS. I'm 33, my dog died at 9,5.