Liam Hendriks' journey from beating cancer to returning to MLB

Courtesy of MLBPAIN MID-DECEMBER, when Liam Hendriks squinted at the PET scan of his body and saw hundreds of spots illuminated by radioactive dye, his first thought was that he looked like his dalmatian, Olive. Hendriks was diagnosed earlier that month with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer, and he had figured it was Stage 1, maybe Stage 2, easily treatable. The imaging -- from his neck to his ankles, his blood to his bones -- told a different story.

For the previous six months, Hendriks had wondered why the lymph node on the back of his neck had swelled to the size of a walnut and why the ones under his jawline jutted out and fattened his face. His wife, Kristi, saw them during a game…