Alex Rimac

I can’t even believe I’m creating a Caring Bridge account for my 13 year old son. It still seems unreal.  Where to start?  Alex was diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma just over a week ago, but his story actually begins about a year-and-a-half ago when his symptoms first appeared. Pain in his right hip, fevers, and night sweats.  All of the  symptoms only appeared at night and were completely gone by the time he woke up in the morning.  After many doctor appointments and tests,  Alex was wrongly diagnosed as having an auto inflammatory disease called CRMO (for short.).  Medication helped with his symptoms, but bloodwork proved something was still wrong. We were due to come back to the rheumatogist this month to receive completely different medication. Long story short...I took Alex to his pediatrician on January 31 for a cough that wasn’t going away.  I truly expected to walk away with antibiotics and steroids. Fast forward to many labs and tests results later, and here we are.   He never had CRMO; it had been cancer all along.  This nasty bitch is in his throat, lungs, hip, liver, and spleen. But no worries!!  Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is highly curable, even at stage 4, and St Jude’s in Memphis, Tennessee is the place to be.  Alex will be there for about 6 months of chemotherapy and possibly another 3 weeks of radiation, if necessary.  Gordon and I will take turns coming home on the weekends (or whenever) to see our 2 daughters and the moms who live with us.   Alex is going to kick cancer in the ass and punch it in the vagina!!  (Oh, you didn’t expect his diagnosis to change my vulgar ways, did you?!)