Paul's Heart

Life As A Dad, And A Survivor

Archive for the tag “Long Term Cancer Survivor”

17 Sep 2025

An Essay – A Hodgkin’s Hero


I write for a variety of resources and opportunities besides here on “Paul’s Heart.” Some make it to publication, and some do not. Regardless, if published or not, as soon as the decision has been made by the entity, I publish my work here on this page. This particular piece I wrote, was for a submission on “blood cancer heroes.” With September being “Blood Cancer Awareness” month, as well as “Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Awareness” month, I decided it was time to recognize a very important hero in the world of blood cancer, in particular, survivors. I try not to be cynical, but as time goes on, it is as hard today as it has been for decades, to give survivorship of cancer, as much of a spotlight, any spotlight, as the battle itself. My essay was on the role of one particular doctor, committed to finding answers and determining care needs for survivors of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, something medicine really never paid attention to, because cancer survivors are not given anything other than a five year average of survival. If you have followed my page for any length of time, you know that many of us live much longer than that. And we do need help, which is where Dr. Oeffinger comes in. If anyone deserves to be recognized as a “blood cancer hero,” it should be him. The first part of this post will be the article I wrote, as it was submitted. The second part, will be “our” story. Alas, my essay was not chosen for that publication. Nonetheless, his story deserves to be told. So here, as was originally submitted, is…

Dr. Oeffinger – Hero Of The Long Term Blood Cancer Survivors

Dr. Kevin Oeffinger, MD has been involved in survivorship care of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma for over three decades from his beginning at the University of Texas, to his tenure heading Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s LTFU (Long Term Follow Up) adult survivorship clinic, to his positions currently held at Duke University; Professor in the Department of Medicine, member of the Duke Cancer Institute, founding director of the DCI Center for Onco-Primary Care, and the DCI Supportive Care and Survivorship Center.  Dr. Oeffinger also has membership involvement with ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology), the American Cancer Society, and the American Academy of Family Physicians.  He is also an editor for the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Oeffinger has published and co-published countless medical journals in regard to late-developing side effects from cancer treatments promoting personalized health care between cancer specialists and primary care physicians.  He travels around the nation and the world educating medical professionals on long term follow up care so that the next generation of doctors, nurses, and technicians are prepared for the growing number of survivors living long after their cancer battles have ended.

Then there are his countless patients that Dr. Oeffinger has provided “long term survivorship care” for, including myself for over fifteen years of my 35 years survivorship of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.  I first met Dr. Oeffinger following emergency open heart surgery for a near-fatal “widow maker” level heart blockage, caused by progressive damage from my radiation treatments eighteen years earlier.  My regular doctors had no idea what they were working with, nor did I think what was happening was related to my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.  His knowledge and experience of late-developing side effects from treatments provides answers to symptoms other doctors who do not understand what they are looking at, explains to them why, shows them how, and then come up with a survivorship plan to deal with those late side effects. 

Dr. Oeffinger once said, “I have received SO MUCH MORE from the Hodgkin’s community than I have given.”  I have no idea how many patients that he has cared for, but I have personally met many of them, as there are many of us who have survived Hodgkin’s Lymphoma for decades now, thirty, forty, fifty years, long enough to develop these late effects, I can safely speak for every patient that Dr. Oeffinger has cared for, without his knowledge, care, and advocacy, we would not have endured all the extra years he has given us.  His care has given us SO MUCH MORE than we could ever give back to him or our survivor community.

Always humble, kind, caring, and unknown to his patients an emotional toll he is likely carrying himself, I am honored to submit Dr. Oeffinger as a blood cancer hero.

And that, was the essay that I submitted, a small snippet, truly not doing justice what Dr. Oeffinger means to me and so many others. I only touched on a few of his credentials. He is literally world famous with his experience when it comes to Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and survivorship. But it is his care and his empathy, and he instills that same skill into all who learn under him from his nurses to his students to his peers.

In 2008, I set out to find a doctor who would not only understand what had happened to me, and was happening to my body, caused by my Hodgkin’s treatments nearly twenty years earlier. It made no sense to me, as I had been “cured” that whole time. Why would the treatments be doing damage to me? Through a peer-to-peer email list serve I participated in, I found Dr. Oeffinger who was working at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. While I had other cancer centers closer in proximity, it was Dr. Oeffinger who was always at the front of our discussions and who I wanted to see.

I remember all of my appointments with Dr. Oeffinger. My first appointment was very telling, the level of care I was about to receive. I had removed my shirt, and he began relating to his nurse, his observations. As I listened to him describe my physical shell, as if he were some sort of human x-ray machine, he pointed out all of the muscle loss from my upper torso, damage from the extreme high dose radiation therapy I had undergone in 1989. He would explain a “pencil neck” and drooping appearance with my neck, and muscle loss in my shoulders that resulted in one shoulder hanging lower than the other. He was already aware of the damage to my heart prior to the appointment, but now he was getting an even clearer picture of what he would deal with. He reviewed the chemotherapy regimen I also underwent back in 1989, and then, with his knowledge and experience, he was able to come up with a surveillance or management plan for me.

Now if you notice something about that last sentence, “surveillance or management,” nothing is said about “cure” or as he put it, “we can’t reverse, stop, or undo what is happening to you, but we can do all that we can to slow the process down.” That was sobering. I know in the beginning, I did not comprehend exactly what that meant. I had just gone through an emergency double bypass because of my radiation therapy. I should have been good. I beat my cancer. I survived my heart surgery. On with my life! Right? Riiiigghhht?

Dr. Oeffinger continued, “in a perfect world, I would be able to order a full-body scan, to see everything that your body is dealing with, but as of now, that is not available.” Over the next couple of years, he would refer me to several, and I do mean several specialists who understand the impact of late side effects from the high dose radiation, and highly toxic chemotherapy that was used to treat my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Gastrointestinal, cardiology, pulmonary, cardio vascular, physiatry, psychology, endocrinology, and I am sure that I am missing a few, are all systems of my body impacted from my treatments. My body was now being watched for potential new developing cancers (I currently am at risk for esophogeal and lung cancer), as well as other potential events.

One of those such events, was a middle-of-the-night ambulance ride to the ER, with aspiration pneumonia and highly septic, my cancer history a contributing factor. And right at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, I would have to undergo three urgent surgeries, two more heart (a stent and a valve) and a carotid artery, all having reached a point of needing to be fixed. Treating or repairing a long term survivor exposed to the therapies like I was, is not a simple thing to do, with the procedures coming with their own risks themselves, which is what makes it critical, that I deal with doctors who understand my medical history and “why?”

While Dr. Oeffinger did not do those surgeries, he was there with me for each one. And while I cannot speak for his other patients, I would bet anything, he was there for all of them as well. In 2017, he even made a phone call to check up on me, after my area was smashed by Hurricane Irma. Long story short, Dr. Oeffinger truly cares about his patients.

I was told by another fellow survivor that I had no chance of getting to see him, because he was either too busy, not currently taking any patients, or whatever. To be honest, I have no idea what made that first visit happen with Dr. Oeffinger, but it did happen. He gave me this to look forward to, back then a 42-year old father of two daughters who had no idea what was happening to their Father, “it’s my goal, that we get you to watch your daughters grow, graduate, go to college, get married, and some day, make you a grandfather.” And I never looked back in my survivorship care, only forward to every milestone that I have gotten to witness since. I have had many severe health events pop up, and it was the knowledge he shared, that put me in the right direction to get the proper help, and to see another tomorrow. I am sixty percent of the way toward our goals with another huge milestone coming at the end of the year. And that makes Dr. Oeffinger a hero to me.

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01 Sep 2025

Another Year, Another September


September is a busy month for raising awareness of certain cancers; blood cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, thyroid cancer, leukemia and lymphomas – often referred to as “childhood cancer” though clearly strike at any age.

If you have followed this page, followed me even before I began “Paul’s Heart,” I have been involved with the world of cancer over 36 years as a patient, survivor, and advocate. I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (actually called Hodgkin’s Disease) back in 1988. I was treated with levels of radation therapy and a chemotherapy cocktail I was not expected to survive, let alone barely tolerate.

Today, I deal with late side effects from both of those treatment regimens that were used to save my life, creating situations almost as fatal as the cancer itself. If you look at the list of “I know”s pictured above, I experience each and every one of them to this day, thirty-six years later. In fact, just today, I learned of a friend who passed from a different cancer, not even a year after diagnosis.

I continue to write, record TikToks and YouTube videos, give speeches, and my most important role as a survivor, advocate and be a voice for others who feel voiceless or without knowledge because it has been the only way for me to give back. My body is so damage from those treatments, I cannot give blood or donate my organs. The only way I can help others is with my experiences. And it is my plan to continue to do so, always with the mentality “if my posts help just one”, though I know my words have reached so many more, until I can do it no more.

I am at the point now, approaching a major milestone, the age of 60 at the end of the year, something I definitely never thought I would see. My survivor’s guilt never takes a break as I say goodbye to one survivor after another, from the same cancer as me, either from the cancer, or the late effects. And even harder for me to deal with, outliving those in my life who have not had to deal with health adversities, something I struggle with constantly.

If I can attribute anything to my longevity, and though they were not yet born when I dealt with my Hodgkin’s, my daughters were there, and have been there, with every health issue from my treatments that I have faced, my inspiration to keep fighting. Yes I know, I cannot control when my body has had enough, as evident by my friends and fellow survivors before me, but there are so many more milestones I want with them, and that definitely drives me.

To my fellow survivors, celebrate this awareness. Any of us who have taken on cancer, knows how hard it was to get through. And for those who are no longer here, you are definitely not forgotten.

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03 Mar 2025

In Between Milestones – 35 Years, Still A Big Deal


When celebrating anniversaries, we make a big deal out of major anniversaries, such as 1st, 5th, 25th, and of course, 50th. In the world of cancer survivorship, many of my fellow survivors and I do the same thing with our anniversaries, though several of us recognize our anniversaries differently. Some will recognize the day that they are told they are in remission, and others, including myself, celebrate the day that I was done with my treatments. The photo above, was taken one year after I was done with my treatment, which means the photo was taken thirty-four years ago. That is right, today I am 35 years in remission!

I think I might actually even look younger today than I did back then.

In November of 1988, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, back then it was called Hodgkin’s Disease. My cancer was staged at 3B, almost as bad as one can have it. I underwent some of the most toxic treatments of chemotherapy and radiation therapy to be able to hear the words “you are in remission.” And though I would get to hear “remission” half-way through my treatments, my doctor wanted me to finish the course, the entire plan of treatments, taking my last dose of medicine on March 3, 1990. That was 35 years ago!

Up to, and including the time I was diagnosed, all I ever knew about cancer, was that people died from it. There was no internet for me in 1988, so all I had to hear about cancer, came from the television news or newspapers, that people died of cancer. You never heard of people surviving cancer. And it was not good enough as a patient to hear about something called a “5-year survival rate,” in spite of this survival rate for Hodgkin’s being well into the mid-80 percentage, at the age of 23 years old, I wanted to live much longer than five years. I believed that I could, especially if the cancer was gone, but I had never heard of anyone surviving long term. At the time, my grandmother was in remission for breast cancer two years, my only reference to anyone surviving cancer. Again, no access to the internet, I had no idea of the inspiration that was out there, people living after cancer, 30, 40, 50 years and more.

But that time would come soon enough, buying my first computer, getting an AOL account, and finding a “listserve” of other Hodgkin’s survivors, some still in treatment, some finished with treatment, and here they were, some who had survived decades. I saw that long term survivorship from cancer could be mine.

There were other things that I learned as time went on, something that even science and medicine were not aware of or prepared for, if we were going to live longer than those five years, that meant that there would be a possibility that we could develop late side effects from the treatments, though what side effects were not known. This was not studied. But this community of survivors I discovered, were sharing this knowledge among each other, and where help with these effects, and doctors who have knowledge of late side effects, could be found. This would come in handy myself, because over 17 years after I finished treatments, the first late effect from my treatments was discovered, in the form of a “widow maker” blockage with my heart, caused by the high dose of radiation that I received. This would be the beginning of many issues that would be discovered over the next 18 years for me. But I want to stress two things, first, not everyone who goes through treatments develops these side effects, and second, as bad as some of these issues got, the proper intervention has given me so many more years, and I have been blessed with so many opportunities and memories.

The fascinating thing is, over 35 years, I have been witness to progress, actually getting to see it, how Hodgkin’s get diagnosed, no more destructive and invasive staging procedures. The toxic and extreme treatments that I and many others were exposed to back in the 1960’s, the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s, with medicine’s knowledge, those very treatments had a good possibility of killing us, are no longer being used. I can tell you that treatments today are just as effective, and though still not pleasant, are more tolerable and safer. I have gotten to witness this progress.

The best part of my 35 years of survivorship, has been having the opportunity of being Dad to the best daughters a Dad could ever hope for. They were not around for my battle with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, but from the first appearance of a late side effect, they have been my motivation and inspiration to not give up. There has been so much that I have gotten to experience with my daughters, now both in college, I really did not ever think I would see this day, yet here I am.

I cannot recognize today however, without recognizing others in my Hodgkin’s family over these thirty-five years. First, all of my new Hodgkin’s friends currently going through treatment yet. I hope that whether you hear of me through “Paul’s Heart”, or have read my book, “Paul’s Heart – Life As A Dad And A 35-Year Cancer Survivor,” follow me on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram, I hope you being able to follow someone who has been a survivor for four decades to be inspiring to you, that you too will have a long and fruitful life ahead of you.

Then there are all of the survivors that have come into my life over all of these years. I have known many of you nearly my entire survivorship. And even more inspiring to me, is that so many of you have survived even longer than I have, forty and fifty years or more! I do not take any day that I have for granted, but seeing how far you have come, gives me hope that I can see that longevity also.

If there is one thing that remains so cruel, sadly, there are some that are not here with me to recognize this day. Some, their bodies just no longer able to take the trauma of decades of late side effects, and even one, barely getting to enjoy a few months out of treatments. I miss you all to this day. I remember you all and the joy you shared with me while we were able to survive together. I wish there was a rhyme or reason, why we do not have a 100% cure rate when we are so close right now! Though progress has been made in safer and more effective treatments, it is not good enough.

The counter on this page now is set for March 3, 2030, which will mark 40 years as a cancer survivor. That is a milestone I want to reach, and likely, with my daughters, hopefully not the only other milestones I get to witness.

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