YouTube personality and author Hank Green announced Friday that he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.
The 43-year-old - whose account @vlogbrothers, which he runs with his brother John, has 3.5 million followers - shared the news in a 13-minute video on their channel titled "So, I've got cancer."
"Good news, bad news," Green said. "One, it's cancer. It's called lymphoma. It's a cancer of the lymphatic system. And good news is something called Hodgkin's lymphoma. It's...like one of the most treatable cancers. It responds very well to treatment. The goal is cure. The procedure to get there is fairly well known, if unpleasant."
Get Tri-state area news and weather forecasts to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York newsletters.
Green said he had many risk factors for lymphoma -- including certain medications he takes, an autoimmune disease and having had mononucleosis as a child. He said he will soon begin at least four months of chemotherapy.
"It seems likely that we caught mine early," Green said. "I'm still waiting on a scan to sort of confirm that."
He added that he may not be able to post content as frequently for his various projects, which also includes the YouTube channel Crash Course and the podcast "Dear Hank and John."
U.S. & World
"I'm playing it by ear," he said. "I know that I'm gonna feel like garbage, like it's gonna be really unpleasant."
Green is the co-founder of VidCon, an internet culture convention hosted annually in Anaheim. VidCon, in an Instagram post Friday, announced that Green 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," the post said. "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 said he has received advice and support from friends who have previously had cancer. He also tweeted "SEND ME PELICANS IM GETTING CHEMO" and received many photos of GIFs of pelicans in response.
"I'm wrestling with the reality that this is now part of how people are going to imagine me," he said in the video. "It's like it's an identity that I'm having thrust upon me, which happens to people all the time. And is totally a thing that I will get over, but I do just kind of want to say it out loud that like I want to be like fun, goofy science guy. Not like struggling with anxiety, cancer guy. And, you know, you can be both."
