Leukaemia
Cancer takes it’s toll. While I have come out of it a much stronger person, I believe cancer contributed to destroying my marriage. I can’t be sure, in all honesty, whether the marriage would have lasted longer or been far shorter without leukaemia. But I do know that it definitely didn’t help.
I will not let the damage of leukaemia ruin my life. I have surgery to look forward to, fixing my hip, and I will not allow my experience to be solely kept to myself. I will help others.
—
[Written in summer of 2006.]
Unfortunately, leukaemia has been a part of my life since October 2003. Since Christine and I have been married only since September of 2002, it has also been a significant part of our marriage.
Having gone in remission by November of 2003, everything had gone as well as could be expected, although the chemo protocols take forever to get through. Nearing the end of the two-and-a-half year protocol, on March 3rd of 2006 I was diagnosed as having relapsed.
It’s been frustrating, but now it’s a matter of going through chemo and preparing for a bone marrow transplant. It’ll be a whole new immune system. This should cure me, but until that comes through, I have the fun of chemo, lumbar punctures, and radiation to deal with, as well as immunosuppressants following the transplant. It will be touch and go, and very dangerous, but hopefully, in the end, it will be worthwhile.
—
[Written in summer of 2005, not long after graduating from the University of Minnesota.]
To update you, though, here in June 2005, I’m still in remission. The doctor put it bluntly that my tests are boring. I’m not entirely out of the woods, but I have a year to go on the long-term meds. I still need to go see a physical therapist about possibly getting a lift for my left leg, since the bone damage threw my bones out of whack.
—
[Written post-hospital in 2003.]
Leukaemia sucks. How’s that?
No, seriously, I have acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. It’s not a pleasant thing to say the least. Leukaemia itself is a cancer of the white blood cells which are produced by the bone marrow. Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is a situation where instead of the white blood cells being formed normally, they divide and divide, but never mature. Effectively, instead of having healthy white blood cells that can fight disease, you end up with a bunch of more/less useless cells, referred to as blasts, which can clog up your circulatory system, taking up space and hindering other cells as well.
Now, leukaemia also affects other things. The thing that affected me most and led to my seeing a doctor and finding out that I have leukaemia was that I had back pain. People tend to ignore back pain, and I’ll tell you if you have back pain for more than two weeks, it’s definitely time to see a doctor, if for no other reason than to get that pain under control. Leukaemia leeches calcium out of the bones and muscles, and so while I figured I’d just hurt my back, reality was that my back was degenerating. Today I have compound fractures in my back. So no only do I get to fight cancer, I get to take a lot of pain medication and try to work on rebuilding my back muscles and then hoping that new osteoporosis drugs and calcium supplements will heal my back. There is some concern that I will never full heal, as far as my bones are concerned.
The key thing for me now is work on getting into remission. Apparently, the protocol I’m on has two very intense phases in the beginning, and how they are attacked depends on test results. I had an inital spinal tap which showed no signs of cancer in my spine, so the first phase went directly after the bone marrow and getting rid of the cancerous cells there. This of course affected my immune system more, and I had to be careful about who visited me. It also affected production of red blood cells, so I ended up needed a couple transfusions. At least I now know my blood type. I’m A-positive. Cool. Common, but that’s not bad for me.
The second phase will focus on the nervous system, while making doubly sure that there are no cancerous cells in the marrow was well. The spine and brain cannot be affected by normal chemotherapy, since they have protective membranes around them. For the spine, this is overcome by injecting chemo intrathecally (as in, yes, they’ll be sticking a needle in m spine). For the brain, I end up have to have radiotherapy. I’ll be looking at about 2400 rads hitting my noggin. And you all thought had little hair on my head now!
After these phases, assuming I’m in remission, we’ll be looking at maintenance drugs and follow-up tests over a perioud totalling about two years. Then, depending on who you ask, five to ten years out they’ll consider me not just in remisssion, but cured.
