Steve Deitrich

Welcome to Steve's CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We greatly appreciate your prayers, support and words of hope and encouragement throughout this journey. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank each of you for the role you play in our lives and throughout this troubling time. 

Steve was diagnosed with Low Grade B-Cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in 2013. He woke up one morning with a swollen lymph node in his neck that was larger than normal and without reason. While the thought of cancer was a harsh reality, it was the best type of cancer to be diagnosed with. He would need to see his Hematologist quarterly throughout the year to check for growth or change; but other than that, treatment was not needed. Lymph nodes would swell and normalize throughout the course of 5 years, but Steve lived a normal life with nothing holding him back.

In April, Steve noticed a dull pain in his left side, night sweats and fatigue. After weeks and weeks of testing, we were told that a quantity of lymph nodes had joined together, created a mass in his abdomen, and resulted in Double Hit B-Cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (DHL) in that isolated area. The size of the mass is pressing on his kidney (which resulted in surgery to add a stent between the bladder and the kidney for functionality), extreme pain, numbing of nerves, etc. With the relief that Lymphoma was still the diagnosis, Double Hit is rare yet aggressive and needs to be treated immediately. On the bright side, it is treatable and responds well to Chemotherapy. While he will never be rid of Low Grade Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, the possibility of curing Double Hit is there and that is the doctors' goal.

Steve is undergoing Chemo treatment hospitalized at Emory over the next 18 weeks. He will receive a slow, 24 hour drip from Monday-Saturday at Winship Cancer Center and then be sent home for 2 weeks in-between;  a total of 6 treatments. We are hopeful and confident that the Double Hit Lymphoma will be cured through this aggressive treatment and Steve can go back to monitoring Low Grade B-Cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and living life without pain and hindrance. We cannot thank the nurses and doctors at Winship enough for taking such good care of him throughout treatment. We feel so blessed to have him in Atlanta and in the best care. 

Thank you for visiting, we will keep you as updated as possible throughout the course of the next few months. 

All Our Love,
The Deitrich Family