Two Years

This time two years ago I was sitting in a hospital bed. I'd been having weird health problems, inexplicable debilitating pain in my hips, exhaustion, and a low grade fever that just lingered and lingered. I went to the doctor, and then went for blood tests, and then got a call from the hospital where the labs were done, as I was driving home, saying I needed to come back right away, and to check in through the emergency room.

The doctor I saw there painstakingly avoided saying anything about cancer, but somehow, I picked it up from the way he was talking, or something. I was admitted, had a bone marrow biopsy, and was diagnosed w/ acute leukemia and transferred to a different hospital with the right specialists. And I had another bone marrow biopsy, done badly, which as torturous. They shouldn't hurt that way, but didn't know enough to protect myself. And so I sat in a hospital bed by myself, and tried to adjust to the idea that I would be receiving massive doses of a variety of chemotherapy drugs, continuously, for the next three years of my life.

I was just about to turn 25, and had all kinds of plans for the next few years. Instead, well, I have made it two years, and that feels like a pretty solid achievement sometimes. I am so tired, and so sad about the part of my life that I lost. And so scared, sometimes, that I think I could drown in it. My counts have been dropping for weeks, so now I'm back in that severely compromised state where I'm not supposed to do anything or go anywhere for fear of catching a fatal cold.

But hey, with any luck, I won't spend this birthday in the hospital, and that's something. No really, that's definitely something. And I'm counting down to finishing this chemo protocol in months now.