Ian Benson ’14 shares his cancer battle experience
Anya Cohen
Features Editor
Ian Benson ’14 assumed he would be spending his summer vacation like his classmates, enjoying a total lack of obligations. This vision was thrown out the window when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma on July 7.
The lymphoma saga began this Spring during finals week, when Benson found a lump on the right side of his neck.
“I had a lot of scruff because I was busy studying, not shaving,” said Benson. “When I finally shaved there was a bump.”
Benson’s parents became aware of the situation when they arrived on campus to move him out and take him home. Neither Benson nor his parents knew what the lump was. So, a week later Benson paid a visit to his doctor.
After being misdiagnosed with mononucleosis by the family practice doctor, Benson went to see a specialist.
“The specialist examined my neck and then stuck a needle in it. Then the specialist, and this is a direct quote, said ‘This is worrisome,’” said Benson.
Six days later Benson received a call from the specialist who informed him that the lump was a cancerous tumor. Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a cancer that originates in the white blood cells and spreads its way from one lymph node group to another. The next step was to go to the hospital for a CT scan, which generates a 3-D picture of the body.
After the CT scan, surgery was on the horizon for Benson. First, he had a biopsy in which they cut out a part of the tumor in order to run tests.
“For the surgery they had to drug me and put me under. When they put the drugs in my arm I remember that my face felt really hot. When I tried to articulate that, all I got out was ‘My face feels really…’ and then I woke up in a different room,” recalled Benson.
From the biopsy, it was determined that the lymphoma was between stages one and two and that the treatment would consist of four sessions of chemotherapy and ten sessions of radiation therapy.
Benson found radiation treatment to be manageable aside from the “ungodly hour” at which the treatment started, but the chemotherapy was a different story altogether.
“Chemo is the worst thing in the world. They are basically pumping poison through your body. They had to give me a steroid to get me through the day, and once it wore off I was miserable,” said Benson.
The misery of the treatments paid off for Benson when the chemo and radiation sessions rendered his body cancer-free.
Throughout the entire encounter with cancer, Benson, along with his friends and family, was able to keep his spirits high. Benson lightheartedly joked, “I felt like I was 45. I woke up one morning expecting a mortgage I didn’t know existed.”
Benson was able to return to school and classes three weeks into the current semester and is thrilled to be back on campus. “I’m happy to be back and return to my mostly normal life,” said Benson.
What is Benson looking forward to now? The release of the upcoming dramatic comedy “50/50,” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. In the film, Gordon-Levitt will play a man recently diagnosed with cancer and will trace his struggle with the disease. To Benson, “it will be like watching my life on screen only Joseph Gorden-Levitt will be playing me.”