About three years ago, when she was 25, Jessica DeCristofaro developed a persistent cough that just wouldn’t go away. When she went to see her doctor, they just brushed the issue off as allergies and sent DeCristofaro home with medication.
The medicine didn’t make any difference to DeCristofaro’s condition, so she returned to the doctor. This time, they sent her home with a diagnosis of acid reflux. Their suggested diet change did help alleviate the cough for a while – but the solution was only temporary.
This back-and-forth continued for a while, until DeCristofaro developed stomach pain so severe, she sought out help from the emergency room.
From there, DeCristofaro was told to visit a more specialized doctor, where they finally gave her the correct diagnosis of her condition:
DeCristofaro had stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, a part of the body’s immune system that extends throughout the body.
The doctors immediately set her to begin chemotherapy.
After a month of treatment, DeCristofaro seemed to be making good progress on her recovery – but the cancer only returned the next month and spread.
Treatment continued, in the form of 20 radiotherapy sessions and six rounds of chemotherapy, and after several months of this, DeCristofaro was finally in remission, without relapses.
Throughout this entire process, DeCristafaro experienced extreme frustration over the fact that there were so few resources available to cancer patients. She wasn’t able to talk to other patients who had been or were also in her position, and instead had to seek out books.
As a result, DeCristafaro became close friends with her nurses as she sought out more specialized advice and decided to become that available resource for other cancer patients.
DeCristafaro has now started a blog and created other social media profiles to document and share her experience, to help other patients who are suffering and looking for support.
Her blog is called “Lymphoma Barbie, because all of the nurses at my cancer center call me a Barbie doll, since I refused to let cancer get the best of me, and still put my make-up and wig on every day,” DeCristafaro explained. Since she started these online profiles, she’s “met so many people going through the same thing and have so many people writing to me every day. It saved me.”
