YouTuber Hank Green announced on Friday, May 19, he has been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of lymphatic cancer.
"It seems likely that we caught mine early," he said in a YouTube video. "I’m still waiting on a scan to sort of confirm that."
Hodgkin's lymphoma is a type of cancer that starts in the lymph system and spreads in an orderly manner from one group of lymph nodes to another, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The symptoms of Hodgkin's lymphoma include swollen lymph nodes, fever, night sweats, feeling tired and weight loss, according to the CDC.
Green, 43, shared in the video he noticed his lymph nodes were "big," so he spoke to his doctor who he said told him it was "probably nothing," but set up an ultrasound to make sure.
The ultrasound found that the images could be suspicious for lymphoma, his medical team said, and he had a biopsy scheduled the next day.
"When you're in the American health care system, you don't expect things to move quick," Green said with a laugh.
The biopsy confirmed he had cancer, he said.
"It's like one of the most treatable cancers," he said. "It responds very well to treatment, the goal is to cure."
He explained that he had several risk factors for lymphoma including taking certain medications, having an autoimmune disease and having mononucleosis as a child.
"Even though I don’t feel bad at all right now except for like, some soreness because of the biopsy, and maybe because my lymph nodes are big, I don’t feel any symptoms of this," he said. "I feel fine. I don’t even really feel fatigued."
Green said he would be starting chemotherapy "very soon," and that he wasn't sure of the impact it would have on his work creating videos and podcasts over the next few months.
"I’m playing it by ear," he said. "I know I’m going to feel like garbage, like it’s going to be really unpleasant."
VidCon, an annual convention for video creators and fans that Green co-founded, said in a statement he would not be attending this year's event in June.
"Due to his recent diagnosis, Hank will no longer be able to attend VidCon Anaheim 2023 next month," VidCon said in an Instagram post. "To our Co-Founder, go-to science guy, and only person on the internet who seems to understand where all the candle wax goes: we’re sending all the love from the VidCon community & beyond."
Green rose to prominence on YouTube along with his brother, young adult fiction writer John Green, for their weekly videos to each other on their channel vlogbrothers. The pair created other channels, like Crash Course, and the podcast, "Dear Hank and John."
