At 27, Marly Garnreiter thought her health issues were just stress-related. After losing her father, Victor, 58, to colon cancer last year, she chalked up her night sweats and itchy skin to grief and anxiety. But what started as minor discomfort turned out to be something much more serious.
“I wasn’t too worried at first,” said Marly, a strategist living in Paris. “The blood tests all came back normal.”
Out of curiosity, she typed her symptoms into an AI chatbot. The result was startling.
“It suggested I might have blood cancer,” she recalled. “I brushed it off. Even my friends laughed it off and told me not to trust something like that over actual doctors.”
For a while, she ignored it—until new symptoms started creeping in. Around Christmas, Marly began experiencing persistent chest pain and extreme fatigue. That’s when she decided to go back to her GP, who referred her for further testing.
Scans revealed a large mass on her left lung, and a biopsy confirmed the diagnosis: Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare but serious type of blood cancer.
Each year, roughly 2,100 people in the UK are diagnosed with this condition, which attacks the lymphatic system—our body’s network for fighting infection and eliminating waste. When affected by Hodgkin lymphoma, cells in this system begin to grow abnormally and lose their ability to protect the body, leading to symptoms like swelling in lymph nodes, night sweats, persistent cough, fatigue, and unexplained itching.
Marly admits the diagnosis hit her hard.
“I felt a lot of anger. It just seemed unfair—like my family had already been through enough,” she said.
Before starting chemotherapy in March, doctors gave her the option to undergo fertility-preservation treatment. She now faces four to six rounds of chemo, but her outlook is hopeful.
“I’m staying positive,” she said. “One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is how important it is to really listen to your body. We can get so caught up in life that we stop noticing the signs it gives us.”
Hodgkin lymphoma is often treatable, especially when caught early—about 85% of patients survive at least five years after diagnosis. But Marly’s story is a reminder that even subtle, easy-to-dismiss symptoms can sometimes signal something far more serious.
“If something doesn’t feel right, trust yourself,” she said. “Your body usually knows when something’s off—even if the tests don’t.”
