Lymphoma lump size (sub mandibular)

Hi again, based on the fact that you said (in your other post) that she is having radiotherapy in the New Year says that her team were happy for her to only have 3 cycles of R-CHOP and use the radiotherapy to do the rests……. and this in turn reduces her bodies toxicity.

Thank you for responding, Mike. Should the lump have disappeared completely?

The only people who can actually say this is her clinical team…… were they expecting this or not?

My first 5 radiotherapy zaps were in September 2013 on a tennis ball sized surface tumour that had attached on to my eye lid closing my eye. I was told it was 50/50 that my right eye could be damaged but I did the 'Man in the Lead Mask" thing, had 5 sessions of Radiotherapy and bang it was gone in 5 weeks leaving a little indentation on my forehead….. my team said that chemotherapy would have been a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Almost immediately after my Radiotherapy the Lymph-nodes on the left of my neck reacted so I by the time I went for my first chemotherapy it looked like I had swallowed a building brick!!

It was something out of a Tom and Jerry film. My jaw had seized, my gums had swollen and we're coming up to cover my teeth. I was having great difficulty eating and was living on a liquid diet and my breathing was starting to be restricted. I had an initial 15min blast of Vincristine and that got me through our family Christmas. It was amazing the difference that first a Chemo blast made to the point I actually had some Christmas dinner, I got my PICC line in then went on to have 6 Cycles of R-EPOCH in between December and April. 5 days of 24hour a day continues Chemo for over 750hrs.

The plan was then for me to have an Allo (donor) Stem Cell Transplant (In the end I had 2) and as part of the preparation for this I had 10 radiotherapy zaps all over my body….. importantly where my neck tumour was….. as there was some residual left after the chemo.……. that was a long way of saying that her growth not completely going often happens. Her team may have expected this to happen and was using the radiotherapy to mop up or the treatment just did not do the complete job so rather than have more chemo use radiotherapy to do the job.

Your going to find that no one size fits all in the Lymphoma journey

So sorry to hear of your situation, but greatly heartened by her response to R-CHOP. In the submandibular area, it is reasonably safe to assume that it was a lymph node which had been taken over by lymphoma cells and become a tumour. Lymph nodes are often considered in normal size even if they are 1cm or slightly larger. 

Nodes which expand considerably can develop scar tissue from the rapid and abnormal expansion of that tissue and because of this, they may never completely reduce to their former size. As well, necrotic tissue may remain for some time, and will resolve as her body eliminates the dead tissue.

My tumours all resolved - at least those which were palpable, but I do have scar tissue in my small intestine which bothers me from time to time. I would think that you could ring up or email and receive some clarity on this issue, but in all honesty it sounds very good indeed.