YouTuber Hank Green has announced he has cancer, having been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Green, who is best known for the Vlog Brothers, Crash Course and SciShow channels on YouTube, announced his news in a YouTube video yesterday (Friday 19 May), saying he is due to start chemotherapy ‘very soon’.
The content creator said he was diagnosed with the cancer after noticing he had enlarged lymph nodes, but was hopeful that they’d caught it ‘early’.
He said he went to seek help after seeing his lymph nodes were ‘big’, with his doctor saying it was ‘probably nothing’ but booked him in for an ultrasound to make sure.
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After the ultrasound scan revealed signs suspicious of lymphoma, Green, 43, had a biopsy scheduled for the following day.
"It seems likely that we caught mine early,” he said. “I'm still waiting on a scan to sort of confirm that."
Green said Hodgkin’s lymphoma was ‘one of the most treatable cancers’, adding: “It responds very well to treatment, the goal is to cure."
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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hodgkin’s lymphoma spreads in an orderly manner from one group of lymph nodes to another, while Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma spreads through the lymphatic system in a non-orderly manner.
Symptoms of both include swollen lymph nodes - especially in the part of the body where the lymphoma starts to grow - fever, night sweats, feeling tired, and weight loss.
Green continued: "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.
"I feel fine. I don’t even really feel fatigued."
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The YouTube star said he wasn’t sure yet how the diagnosis would impact his work, saying he is due to start chemotherapy ‘very soon’.
Explaining he planned on ‘playing it by ear’, Green said: “What am I gonna make? I don’t know.”
He added: “I know that I’m gonna feel like garbage. It’s gonna be really unpleasant.”
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He said the cancer diagnosis had really made him ‘grateful’ for the friends in his life.
“All of the time that I have spent investing in friendships, and even when they have been hard, to try and keep them strong, and even when I have been busy, to try and spend time with them, has been joyful in the moment and wise in the long term,” Green said.
“I’ve really needed friends in the last few weeks, and I’ve been very grateful to have them.”
VidCon, an annual convention for video creators co-founded by Green, confirmed he would not be attending this year's event, which takes place in June.
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"Due to his recent diagnosis, Hank will no longer be able to attend VidCon Anaheim 2023 next month," it 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."
Jess Hardiman