• In the Loop: Patient with rare blood cancer pedals across U.S. to raise research money

In the Loop patient Chris Edgerton on the beach, at the edge of the ocean, holding his bicycle up in the airChris Edgerton was working in his garage when he started feeling unusually tired. "I was trying to put a screen up and I just couldn't do it," he tells us. Surprised but not overly concerned, Chris mentioned this to his doctor during his annual physical. "I told her I felt tired all the time and that was unusual for me," Chris says. "I told her I didn't feel like myself."

Chris' doctor sent him for blood work. Having worked as a nurse in his native England before moving to Florida, Chris didn't have a good feeling about what the results would show. His suspicion was soon confirmed by his doctor, who recommended he see an oncologist/hematologist. Chris' wife, Deirdre, took charge from there. "She said, 'OK. Then we're not messing around. We're going straight to Mayo Clinic,'" Chris tells us. They soon met with Sikander Ailawadhi, M.D., an oncologist/hematologist at Mayo Clinic's Florida campus. After a battery of tests, Chris was diagnosed with Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia, a rare, slow-growing blood cancer. Read the rest of Chris' story.
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This story originally appeared on the In the Loop blog.