Surviving Cancer

A lot has happened in the last week, despite the fact that it feels like time has been inching by. I am still currently living at the hospital. It’s not all bad, but I miss my kids so much it hurts. Tomorrow marks two weeks since being diagnosed. Two weeks since the dreadful day that I learned I had Leukemia. Two weeks since I’ve held or snuggled my kids. Two weeks feels like an eternity when you calculate your time in terms of your kids. So much happens in two weeks in a child’s life, and while I FaceTime and get plenty of pictures and videos, it’s not the same. Not even close.

Here, at the U of M they have double and single rooms on the oncology floor. I was originally put in a double room by myself because that is what they had available at the time, but I have since moved to a single room. Thank goodness for that. This whole situation would be a million times worse if I had to share a room with a complete stranger. Due to my condition, I am not allowed to share a room, so it worked out in my favor. I’m just too susceptible to infection right now. I’ve been able to bring in some personal touches and comfort items from home to make it feel less hospital.

I was in the hospital for almost a week before they had all the information they needed from my blood and bone marrow to come up with a treatment plan. I started chemo last Sunday on the 14th. I didn’t finish chemo until Friday afternoon. I was getting two doses a day for the first 4 days and then one, 24-hour drip of a different, stronger chemo drug. I was pretty much wiped out, physically the entire week. Days rolled into a nights and it’s all just a big blur. I would sleep all day and all night, other than when meeting with doctors or having nurses come in for vitals or meds.

I get daily visits from a physicians assistant and my doctor. According to them, everything is going as it should. The chemo is wiping out all my cells, even the good ones, so my blood counts are all very low. I’ve received several blood transfusions, as well as, platelet transfusions. Before being transferred to the U of M, I had a Hickman port placed in my chest, and let me tell you, it has made everything so much easier. I don’t have to get poked and prodded a million times a day because I have two built in IV ports. It’s the bomb.

The Friday right after I got here, I had my first lumbar puncture where they drew fluids to test, but also gave me a dose of chemo into my spinal fluid as a prophylactic. It wasn’t until midway through the next week that we got the results from that lumbar puncture. Unfortunately, they did find cancer cells in my spinal fluid. So tomorrow, I have my second lumbar puncture where they will draw more fluids and inject more chemo right into my spinal fluid. Yes, the whole cancer in the spinal fluid things sucks, but if you’re looking for a bright side, which I always am, my brain MRI and CT scan of my body showed no solid mass tumors.

Me, Josh, and my mom met with a member of the Bone Marrow Transplant team on Friday. He explained a lot, most of which went straight over our heads. What we did take a way from this meeting, though, was that the search has started. The search for a BMT (bone marrow transplant) match has begun. My doctor hopes that after two or three cycles of chemo I will go into remission, and then at that point, would be able to have a BMT. He mentioned late May or early June, but only time will time. We did find out that because all three of my sisters are also BRCA1 positive, it makes them ineligible to be a donor, so the search for an unrelated donor has begun.

So, I’m two weeks in, and my doctor said I will be here for about two more weeks. They apparently need to keep me here to monitor my blood counts and to monitor symptoms and side effects of chemo. I’m seriously hoping it’s less than two weeks. I really don’t know how I will survive another two weeks without seeing my kids. My heart is so broken. It’s a feeling that is so hard to cope with. I know they are being taken care of and loved, and that does make it easier, but it doesn’t take my heartache away.

I continue to receive an outpouring of love and support from family, friends, friends of friends, and people I don’t even know. It is beyond anything I could have asked for. I’ve been through this. I asked these same people for help once. For money. For prayers. For support. Now, here I am, doing it all over again. How can I feel ok about asking for more help? How can I feel ok about accepting gifts and money, again? The situation I have found myself in is all too familiar. I was just starting out at a brand new job, literally worked one day. I haven’t officially established my MN residency yet. Our medical insurance stuff is “on the fence” and “in the works.” We aren’t financially stable in any way, or even close to it. The one major difference is, now we are home. We are near family, and thank God for that.

People continue to ask, how they can help. Aside, from gifts, money, or prayers, there are a couple big things you could do. Indirectly to me, I encourage those of you that are able, to donate blood, platelets, and plasma, because I need those to survive and kick this cancers ass, and so do so many other people. You could also get your name on the registry for bone marrow transplant and become an eligible donor, incase someone else is in need and is a match to you. Visit bethematch.org if your interested! You could help save lives, and that would be mean so much to me, now having to go through this and realizing how important those donors are!