My brother has lymphoma and...

[WorryWortAgain]

My brother was recently diagnosed with Follicular B cell lymphoma, low grade, stage 2. He's really sick right now with acute sinusitis and an ear infection. My mom is freaking out and it's making me start to freak out. How serious is it to be sick when you have lymphoma. She's acting like he's going to die! I don't want to ask him about it because I don't want to upset him but at the same time I want to know if there's a need to be worried. TIA!

[MyNameIsTerry]

I'm sorry to hear about your brothers diagnosis. This is bound to be a very hard & scary time for you all and you have additional challenges with your HA issues that will attempt to skew things into something worse than they are.

Information can be important with this so I've just copied a couple of pieces from our leading cancer charity, Cancer Research UK:

Follicular lymphoma is one of the most common types of non Hodgkin lymphoma

AND

The low grade lymphomas tend to develop quite slowly, over a number of years. Sometimes no treatment is needed at first. Although they can be harder to get rid of completely than high grade lymphoma, they generally need less intensive treatment. They can often be kept under control for many years. Treatment for people with follicular lymphoma has improved significantly in recent years. There are many more treatments available nowadays that have fewer side effects and work better than the older treatments.

Given the slow growth, often lack of treatment needed and low grade status I would think that also getting common ailments on top is common. This alone is obviously very stressful for your mum, anything like illness is always a parents worst nightmare when it comes to their kids. So, whilst it is having a knock on effect to your own anxiety, she may just be very stressed right now and worried about yet another issue on top of his diagnosis. This doesn't mean it could be bad BUT the obvious thing here is to consult people who understand what this means, like a doctor or a cancer specialist like the charities or the teams if their is treatment.

It's not a stage that has caused any spreading to more vital areas or an aggressive form, so this could mean very little other than a doctor monitoring him to ensure he gets over it without any issues but without understanding the issue properly it conjures up thoughts about people with more aggressive conditions and how infections can be a problem. I think you need to look at it as nothing until you hear otherwise and you/your mum should be asking a doctor what this means or whether it means anything at all to his diagnosis.

I think you are right not to raise this with him, if it is truly nothing to worry about, it will just be a fright for nothing.

I hope he gets better soon and his diagnosis is successfully treated.