Desperate Housewives' Season Finale Sheds Light on Lymphomas
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| Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo |
When a major character on one of TV’s hottest shows is diagnosed with cancer, it offers an opportunity to raise awareness and offer insights into early detection, treatment and prevention.
Sunday night’s Desperate Housewives finale included a cliff-hanger that left character Lynette Scavo is facing Hodgkin disease and will undergo treatment next season. The storyline offers insight into a rarer form of cancer that affects only 7,350 people each year, according to the American Cancer Society. (That compares to more than 175,000 women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer).
“With early detection, Hodgkin disease is typically very curable, so despite the relatively small number of people diagnosed with Hodgkin disease each year, it is important that people are aware of it and its signs and symptoms,” said Madan Jagasia, M.D., assistant professor of Medicine and medical director of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s Outpatient Stem Cell Transplant Clinic.
Lymphomas are a collection of cancers that affect the body’s lymph system, part of the immune system that fights disease. Because lymph tissue is found throughout the body, Hodgkin lymphoma can begin in almost any part of the body and spread to almost any tissue or organ in the body.
Possible signs of adult Hodgkin lymphoma include swollen lymph nodes, fever, night sweats, and weight loss. These and other symptoms may be caused by adult Hodgkin lymphoma; other conditions may cause the same symptoms. A doctor should be consulted if any of the following problems do not go away:
- Painless, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, underarm, or groin.
- Fever for no known reason.
- Drenching night sweats.
- Weight loss for no known reason.
- Itchy skin.
- Feeling very tired.
For more information
- Learn more about Hodgkin’s disease
- Learn more about non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas
- Kathy's Story: hear how one Nashville woman faced her own cancer diagnosis
