Steve Garraty survived Stage III Hodgkin’s lymphoma | adriamycin | bleomycin | ABVD | MOPP | oncovin
DESCRIPTION
At age 18, Steve Garraty ran on his high school’s track team and was in great shape. But he noticed a lump on the left side of his neck and a tingling sensation anytime he drank alcohol. The lump grew, he sought medical attention and the lump turned out to be a mass. He had the lump surgically removed, but only days later, he received a phone call informing him he had Stage III Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Steve was put on a chemotherapy regimen of ABVD and MOPP. He suffered the usual side effects associated with chemo, but achieved survivorship. He cannot run anymore because of how it affects his knees and back, but otherwise leads a happy life with his wife and two sons.
Like many other teenagers, Steve felt invincible, so at first he wasn’t concerned about the lump in his neck; but he visited a buddy whose mom was a nurse. As soon as she saw the lump, she was alarmed. Steve told his parents about the lump, and they became alarmed as well. The lump then grew rapidly. When he sought medical attention, a biopsy revealed a mass the size of a grapefruit.
The mass was removed, but further tests showed in addition to Steve’s neck the mass spread to his chest and stomach, and that he had Stage III Hodgkin’s lymphoma. When learning of his diagnosis, he was most concerned about whether he would be able to attend a party the following night.
The oncologist told Steve the only treatment option was chemotherapy.
Treatment began in the summer of 1986 and finished in the spring of 1987. Every two weeks Steve went in and the care team alternated between two regimen. One was MOPP, which stands for mustargen, oncovin, procarbazine and prednisone. The other was ABVD, which stands for adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine and dacarbazine. Steve experienced many of the typical side effects tied to chemo, including nausea, fatigue and hair loss.
Steve was making progress. His care team informed him the tumor was shrinking, and on a subsequent visit, he was surprised to learn there was no evidence of disease.
While it might sound strange, Steve Garraty said in retrospect, cancer saved his life. It forced him to change his lifestyle in a positive way. Without his cancer journey, he said drugs and alcohol would be playing a major role and that had he gone to college, he would have flunked out.
Steve has gone on to write a book documenting his story. The book, “Greatfruit, How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life.” It seeks to be of aid to anyone who has experienced trauma and tragedy, regardless of whether they have been diagnosed with cancer.
Additional Resources:
Steve’s Book: “Greatfruit, How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life.”
Steve Website: https://www.stevegarraty.com
· Amazon: https://bit.ly/4kkB4mB
· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/foryou/
· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevegarratyauthor/
TRANSCRIPT
Bruce Morton: Welcome. This is the @CancerInterviews podcast, and I am your host, prostate cancer survivor Bruce Morton. For our guest on this episode, his cancer journey began at age 18. Steve Garraty of Tampa, Florida felt a lump in his throat, which turned out to be a mass. That mass spread to his chest and stomach and became a diagnosis of Stage III Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The mass was removed, Steve had to go on a massive chemotherapy regimen, but he achieved survivorship and is here is to share his story. Now, let’s hear it and Steve, welcome to Cancer Interviews.
Steve Garraty: Thanks, Bruce. Thanks for having me on.
BM: Before we learn about your cancer journey, Steve, it is our custom to learn about our guest and his or her life away from cancer. If you would, tell us a bit about where you are from, what you have done for work and what you like to do for fun.
SG: Sure. I live in Tampa, Florida. I have been down for quite some time. I have raised two kids, and I now have a grandson. My wife and I have been married for 32 years. I have been in sales leadership for most of my career, Bruce, I have been managing sales teams. Started in Atlanta, then we moved down here in 2001. In my spare time, we like to travel. I published a book in 2025 and when I was not working, my time was dedicated to getting that book completed.
BM: For all of us diagnosed with cancer, there was that time in which something abnormal with our health occurred and that began a chain of events that led to a cancer diagnosis. For you, when did that happen and what happened?
SG: It was near the end of my senior year in high school, that was in 1986. I would feel a tingling sensation in my neck when I drank alcohol, which unfortunately I was doing a lot of back then. It would almost like when your foot falls asleep, but it was on the left side of my neck. At first there was nothing visible, Bruce, but over the course of a couple months, eventually I started to feel something and then I started to see something. It turned out that was a mass, which led to a biopsy. At age 18, I felt healthy. Like most 18-year-olds, I felt invincible. I was running on the high school track team. I felt like I was in great shape, but there was this mass on the side of my neck. It didn’t hurt, it didn’t cause any pain, but when they did the biopsy and took it out, it was the size of a grapefruit. It was pretty large by the time I was diagnosed. When I was diagnosed, more than anything else, I was upset that I couldn’t party anymore like I had. That was more devastating than the fact that I had cancer.
BM: By the way, we hope you will find time to like and subscribe to our channel. And if you hit the bell icon, that way you will be notified whenever we post an interview. We also want to remind you that on Cancer Interviews, we do not provide medical advice. If you or a loved one seek medical advice, please consult a licensed health care professional. Finally, as you watch, as you listen, we would like to hear from you. We would like to learn where you are watching from, along with what you think of Steve’s story.
Steve, you had mentioned the diagnosis, so if you would, walk us throw the events that led to the diagnosis.
SG: I was partying at a very unhealthy pace. I was drinking heavily. I was getting into a lot of trouble. I had wrecked my parents’ cars five times in two years, so I was heading down a pretty dark path. Towards the end of my senior year, I had started to feel in my neck, but I would say my relationship with my parents was strained at that point because of my behavior and poor decisions. That led to my parents and I avoiding each other a lot. I had just graduated high school, I was working every day and going out every night. They didn’t really see me much and they didn’t notice the lump on my neck, which grew pretty quickly. I was actually at a friend’s house, and his mom was a nurse. She noticed it and became very alarmed. She said if I didn’t tell my parents about my neck, that she would. When I came home and showed my parents, they became alarmed, too. That led to a couple quick doctor appointments and then a biopsy. All that happened with seven to ten days because it was pretty alarming when you looked at it.
BM: You said this mass grew to the size of a grapefruit. If you would, describe the surgical procedure accompanying its removal.
SG: They removed it, so at the time they knocked me out. When I woke up, I had this huge bandage on the side of my neck, my parents took me home and they said the surgeon would call me with the results. That was on July 3, 1986. The next morning, the surgeon called me pretty early in the morning and told me I have cancer. From there, he did give me this stern warning about my drinking and then he said he wanted me to see an oncologist immediately to see if it has spread, and how it will be treated, be it radiation or chemotherapy. My parents and I started doing some research and quickly concluded chemo would be the worst possible option and there was also a possibility it could be both chemo and radiation. We quickly got into an oncologist within a week and found out it was Stage III, and the cancer was in my neck, chest and stomach.
BM: So, did that rule any possibility of a decision between chemotherapy and radiation?
SG: It did. We had read about Stage III and Stage IV Hodgkin’s lymphoma. With that cancer in Stage III or Stage IV, it usually meant chemotherapy. Stage IV was more likely chemotherapy and radiation at that time, from what we had read, so knew before the oncologist said anything that I was going to put on chemotherapy.
BM: Describe the regimen on which you were put.
SG: So, I went in every two weeks, and they alternated between two regimens. They are MOPP and ABVD. The first stands for mustargen, oncovin, procarbazine and prednisone. The second stands for adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine and dacarbazine. I would go in for one session and get MOPP, then two weeks later and get ABVD. I did chemo between nine and ten months. This started in July 1986, and I finished in the spring of 1987.
BM: That sounds like a very unforgiving regimen. Looking back, what was the toughest part of dealing with that regimen, physically and emotionally?
SG: Physically, with the MOPP, I didn’t get sick. I felt a little nauseous, but I didn’t vomit. I was expecting the worst, kinda got the best and started feeling invincible again. Then everything changed with the ABVD. I was projectile vomiting about halfway through. It took about 45 minutes to an hour for the chemotherapy to drift into my veins. Back then, there weren’t televisions and Smartphones, fewer ways to entertain yourself, so I would wait for the chemo to assert itself, I would get sick and vomit. For about twelve hours, I would end up puking my guts out, for lack of a better way of putting it. I would come home, my parents would have a bucket in the car because I would be sick on the way home. Then there would be ten to twelve hours in which I would just lay on the bathroom floor because I needed to be close to the toilet and just be sick all day long. That was the physical part. I lost my hair. That was devastating, as my hair was important to me at the age of 18. Socially, most of my friends disappeared. They went off to college. Some of them were not the best influences that I was hanging around, so they disappeared. My girlfriend and I, who had been dating for two years, broke up pretty early on in the cancer journey. Socially it was very rough, but the mental part you hit on, it just felt like it kept wearing down on me, and I did have a mental breakdown, a rock bottom moment where I went in for a chemotherapy appointment where I told my mother I needed to be left alone before going inside. What I thought would be a minute became an hour, with me bawling in a parking garage, eventually begging God to give me the strength to get through this, but yes, there was a point in which I was thinking about throwing in the towel and quitting. I just didn’t think I could do it anymore. Mentally, it was very taxing.
BM: And yet it sounds like you did have some measure of optimism. What was, or were, the sources of that optimism?
SG: It was a few things. One was a book I read about positive and negative mindsets and how people who viewed a situation as a glass half-full invariably had better outcomes than those whose viewed the situation as a glass half-empty. The book also addressed visualization. So, my parents had me keep a journal which eventually became the foundation for my book. Cancer derailed my life plans at 18, so I started visualizing life after cancer. I visualized going off to college. I literally visualized what my dorm room would look like, what major I would pick, I visualized making new friends, I visualized dating again and my hair growing back. I did a lot of that and documented it in my journal, so I really focused on the positives and what life would look like, post-cancer. I do have to say it was a year of hell for me, it was pretty miserable, but I wanted to know what life was going to look like and I feel like that gave me something to shoot for and aim for and kind of a North Star to keep me going.
BM: You eventually achieved survivorship. When did you sense you were moving in that direction?
SG: I don’t think I did. I feel with cancer, you don’t know when the end is. Nobody said I would do chemo until a certain date. I would just continue to get my chemotherapy and periodically every few months, I would get the x-rays and the CT scans. I remember when the oncologist said, “It’s working. We see that the tumors are shrinking.” That was positive news. The next positive came when I went in for what I thought was going to be a chemo appointment, and the oncologist walked in and told me and my parents, “We got it all.” I was in shock. I was wondering if they should run some more tests because of my concern of the cancer returning. The oncologist said, “No. There is no evidence of cancer. We got it all,” but to be quite candid, Bruce, I just kept thinking about the chemo and the mental wear-down of that process, but then, there was one day in which the oncologis walked in with great news. It was a flip of the page, and then I had to get used to being a survivor and moving forward with my life.
BM: Steve, I want to hit the rewind button for a moment. You said when you were diagnosed, top of mind was your ability or inability to go to the next party; but here you were, you had just learned you had survived Stage III Hodgkin’s lymphoma. At this point, what was top of mind?
SG: I wanted to experience college. I knew that cancer had saved my life. I knew that best-case scenario I would have failed out of college, worst-case scenario hurt myself or others. I could have been in prison. I felt like cancer had put me on a better path. In the months after I learning I had survived cancer, I concluded cancer had saved my life. I think God intervened and put me on a better path and cancer is what it took for me to wake up and change my lifestyle. I think over time, I began to see other ways that cancer could positively impact the rest of my life, and that is what I started to embrace, moving forward after that.
BM: If your health was 100% pre-diagnosis, these days how close are you to 100%, or if there is anything physically you cannot do today that you could do, pre-diagnosis, what would that, or they, be?
SG: I am 58, so at 58, the knees creak a little bit, the back aches a little bit more, but exercise is very important to me, so I think it is more a factor of age than cancer, but I don’t run because running on the pavement is too hard on my knees and back. My health was very good, so I don’t think that poor health led to my cancer. I do think that the drinking and the stress and the drugs and all that stuff contributed to me getting sick. Today I think that health and exercise is extremely important, having a positive mindset is extremely important. I am a big believer in gratitude and empathy, and I try to live my life with those things and try to have a more positive mindset. As far as physical limitations, there are none. Once I was done with cancer, the biggest thing I had to deal with the fear of it coming back. There was a five-year period when I was in remission and they told me if you get past that, your chances of getting cancer again are the same as anybody else. My cancer journey? It has made me a better father, husband and business leader and it has changed my faith.
BM: And in terms of your being a better father and husband, that is part of your story and your story has been documented in a book. Tell us about it.
SG: It started out as a journal, which my mom forced me to do because she thought it would be therapeutic, with my social life being in the tank, and it did help. Yes, I wrote about the pain and the vomiting, but eventually, I wrote about the hope and what the future could look like and I filled up a pretty thick notebook with my thoughts and observations. Then I went to college, tried to forget about cancer and I didn’t write a lick for four years, but in my twenties, I started to pick up the writing here and there. But life got in the way, I had two kids. I had been told there was a 70% chance I would never have children, so having kids was a blessing. I was traveling a lot for work. I would pick up the writing here and there, and I thought I wanted to leave my story to my children because I think there are a lot of lessons in the book that they can learn from my story. Eventually, I thought that the story had a broader appeal, to really anybody who has gone through a major trauma or tragedy, anything like that, and I think it has. Since the book has come out, I have heard from a lot of people that have gone through a lot of things, not necessarily with cancer. I finished the book in 2021.
BM: What is the name of the book, and if somebody wants to get it, how do they get it?
SG: It is “Greatfruit,” and the subtitle is “How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life.” You can find it anywhere on line, beginning with Amazon.
BM: Steve Garraty, Tampa, Florida, thank you very much for sharing with us, a story through your life’s path which threw you for a loss, and yet you have rebounded to a great extent and in so many ways you life is better that can be an inspiration for others, cancer or no cancer. Steve Garraty, thanks for being with us on Cancer Interviews.
SG: Thanks for having me, Bruce. It was a pleasure.
BM: And we want to remind you as we always do when we conclude, if you or a loved one are on a cancer journey, you are not alone. There are individuals out there, like Steve Garraty, who have words of wisdom that can lift and inform. So, until next time, we will see you down the road.
Additional Resources:
Steve’s Book: “Greatfruit, How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life.”
Steve Website: https://www.stevegarraty.com
· Amazon: https://bit.ly/4kkB4mB
· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/foryou/
· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevegarratyauthor/
SHOW NOTES
TITLE: Steve Garraty, Stage III Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Survivor – Tampa, Florida, USA
At age 18, Steve Garraty ran on his high school’s track team and was in great shape. But he noticed a lump on the left side of his neck and a tingling sensation anytime he drank alcohol. The lump grew, he sought medical attention and the lump turned out to be a mass. He had the lump surgically removed, but only days later, he received a phone call informing him he had Stage III Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Steve was put on a chemotherapy regimen of ABVD and MOPP. He suffered the usual side effects associated with chemo, but achieved survivorship. He cannot run anymore because of how if affects his knees and back, but otherwise leads a happy life with his wife and two sons.
Addition Resources:
Steve’s Book: “Greatfruit, How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life”
Steve Website: https://www.stevegarraty.com
Time Stamps:
02:00 Steve was 18 when he noticed a lump in his throat.
06:15 Describes the removal of his grapefruit-sized mass.
07:38 Learned he would have to undergo chemotherapy.
08:20 Names the medications involved in his chemo regimen.
09:45 Steve describes the toughest part of his chemo experience.
12:22 Asked what were his sources of optimism.
16:41 Asked when he sensed he was trending toward survivorship.
18:22 Names his top priorities once he reached survivorship.
19:35 Steve compares his health today to his health pre-diagnosis.
KEYWORDS (tags):
hodgkin’s lymphoma
ABVD
adriamycin
bleomycin
vinblastine
dacarbazine
MOPP
mustargen
oncovin
procarbazine
prednisone
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