Photo courtesy of Elliott Lemberg
Elliott Lemberg is the artistic director at the New Albany High School theater department. He was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, stage
four, in December 2019. The disease kept him on medical leave for the remainder of that school year. His interview with Health New Albany magazine was edited for space and clarity.
HNA: What was life like before your diagnosis and when did you start noticing something different was going on in your life?
EL: Regarding life before the diagnosis, it’s always been very busy. Running the theater program and teaching consumes a lot of my time. In 2019 we were invited to be a part of the American High School Theatre Festival in Edinburgh, held during the Fringe Festival. We took a production called Pippin over to Edinburgh and performed in August of that year. The trip butted right up to the start of the year.
Two days later, I just couldn’t get my legs back under- neath me. I was just exhausted. This went on for weeks. Then I started to have some back pain as well. I’ve had kidney stones since 2006 so I thought it was one of my kidney stones acting up, but the pain was persistent. It wasn’t going away. And the fatigue wasn’t really going away no matter how long I slept.
I called my general practitioner and they set an appointment for me in October and said, let’s go ahead and get a CT scan. I went in for the scan and then, a few days later, I got a call from my doctor and that’s when he told me that I had this lymphoma growing in my back, or what he perceived to be lymphoma from the CT scan. So he referred me to (The Ohio State University James Cancer Hospital).
They were able to pinpoint exactly what it was and it’s pretty incredible how specific they can be in their diagnosis.
Once they made the diagnosis my oncologists said they want to get me in for chemotherapy next week, which was the holidays and I was like, ‘Can we wait until at least after Christmas?’
And he said, ‘That’s fine, but we do need to get you in soon because it’s stage four and it’s rapidly growing.’
HNA: What was your reaction to the diagnosis?
Photo courtesy of Elliott Lemberg
EL: I think whenever anyone hears stage four related to cancer it chills their blood a bit and, certainly, there was that initial fear. You start to do a little bit of soul-searching at that moment as well, but I was able to reframe my mindset and just start thinking about next steps, trying not to think too far ahead.
I know in talking with my treatment team they began to map out what that process would look like and what the treatment would be like. … The prognosis was fairly positive based upon other people who had any other similar lymphoma that it responded very well to chemotherapy and it was very treatable.
Just being able to take it one step at a time, going into that process, was really helpful for me.
It’s like, ‘OK. So what do I need to do in the next hour or the next day?’ Part of it too was getting through the production of Beauty and the Beast, which was a beast of a show – pun intended. I mean, a huge Disney production. That was also a really good distraction at the time as well. It kept my mind occupied.
(I was) going to have six rounds of chemotherapy and go- ing to be out for six months, at least. So having to plan for that was pretty monumental at the time.
HNA: What were those six months like and how would you say it affected you and your family?
EL: I said this to a lot of people once I recovered: It’s not a journey that I would ever recommend to anyone. I never want anyone to have to go through it because it’s challenging. I mean, the other drugs affect you in a lot of different ways and the longer you’re in the treatment, the more run-down you become. Your body is being hit with these chemicals and that’s killing the cancer cells, but they’re also impacting your other cell counts as well – your white blood cells, red blood cells. The symptoms were ranging from moderate to severe.
By the time May rolled around, I was feeling pretty rough, but I was keeping that end goal in sight.
HNA: What was the experience like being away from work? And how did that affect some of the students you normally work with?
EL: For me, it was really difficult stepping away. That was a loss in and of itself because I love coming to work and I love working with my students.
The benefit of my position is that I often work with kids for two, three, four years, and I’m also teaching at the middle school. So, I may have them for five or six years. We develop really strong relationships in the department. Having to completely step away from all that was difficult. The first few weeks away was a big adjustment for me because I’m used to just go and go.
I would try to connect with the students as much as I could but as the treatment went on I was getting more and more run-down. It was hard. I did connect with my substitute especially in the first couple weeks and there were a couple of opportunities where I would call them and they put me on speaker and I was able to connect with the kids that way.
They had a performance in January of a piece that we’d been working on right before I left. I was able to wish them a good show – break legs, those kinds of things – before they went on stage. And I know it was good for them to hear my voice. But it was really difficult, and then the world just went topsy-turvy in the middle of my treatment because the pandemic started.
HNA: Where are you at now in your journey?
EL: The last summer, when I finished out my round of chemo and they did my CT scans, my scan said the tumor shrunk, showed no activity. My body was just beginning to recuperate. … My energy started to come back and I started to really, truly feel better.
I realized how awful I felt during the fall of 2019, it’s something that just settles in so slowly. My advice is if you really start feeling run-down or feeling off and you’re having random pains persisting, go and see your medical professional because it could be nothing, but it could also be something else.
I think they caught mine in the nick of time. By the time, the school year rolled around last year, even though we were heading into a year of unknowns, personally, I was feeling so much better.
Brandon Klein is senior editor. Feedback welcome at bklein@cityscenemediagroup.com.
