Thank you for sharing your story, Gail. HL has been one of the greatest success stories in the history of cancer management. I recall it being uniformly fatal in the first half of the 1800s (described in 1832 London, as I recall). We got sufficiently good at dealing with HL that the focus shifted to the harm we have been doing (de-escalation). Fortunately, led by the Germans and others, we are removing more and more pieces of treatment (including my tool of radiotherapy) from the care of many, without sacrificing survival (and relapse-free and progression-free survival. While the current report highlighted overall survival, modern studies typically track progression free survival, relapse-free survival, disease-specific survival, and overall survival. The best ones fold in quality of life, too Your point is taken. And fortunately, most patients I see do not suffer a relapse. I am so sorry that you did.

Thank you for reading the piece and for stopping by to comment. Appreciate you,

Michael