F*** Cancer (stories from a twenty-something survivor)

2. The Beginning (A.D.)

So, life A.D.: after diagnosis. After I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) we had to quickly figure out next steps. AML is a blood cancer. I had no tumors or anything like that. The stem cells that made up my bone marrow weren't producing new blood cells like they were supposed to, which is why I was low in everything, they were producing cancer cells. Because of this I would need several transfusions throughout treatment. From what I understand AML is dangerous because it moves quickly (hence "acute") and needs to be treated as soon as possible, no looking for a doctor or thinking about what you want to do. No soul searching or worrying, just treatment ASAP.

Within days I was transferred to the Mayo Clinic because it looked like I would be a likely candidate for transplant and they are the nearest transplant center to the hospital I was in. I was taken by ambulance, which was interesting. I got to watch my mom follow in the car the whole way since I was facing the back. Nothing exciting happened, I was brought directly to my new room and met my nurse for the day that helped me settle in.

I had to get a PICC put into my arm for IVs and blood draws. Yay for no more needles, but it was not fun to get inserted (it involved quite a few needles). I got my blood tested every day to see if I needed a transfusion of red blood cells or platelets. I also had to get another bone marrow biopsy done because they like to run their own tests before treatment. That was stressful because, unlike the other hospital, they do conscious sedation which meant I was still awake. 2/10 do not recommend.

*Skip this paragraph if you get easily grossed out by medical stuff*

The basics of a bone marrow biopsy is that they drill a tiny hole in the back of your hip bone and extract a marrow core to study and run tests on. For conscious sedation, there's a general sedative through IV which makes you goofy and forgetful (I don't remember what the drug was) and a local anesthetic at the biopsy site which burns when injected. It's hard to recall much from a patient standpoint (thankfully) but it feels weird when they drill and shoots pain down your leg when they extract. Overall, weird and hurts like a really bad bruise for a day or two after. Best results have been applying cold-packs pretty quickly after the procedure, it hurt less later and for a shorter time.

*done talking about it*

My parents worked out a schedule where they would trade off every 24 hours so someone was always with me. It put a lot of miles on the cars because the house is about 100 miles from the hospital. They are both incredible people, they both had to hold down their full-time jobs while all this was happening.

I got my induction chemotherapy pretty quickly, which involved multiple chemo drugs over a week. As soon as I started chemo I was confined to the pod which included my room and the hallway to and from the nurses station.

I cut and donated my hair before it could fall out. My best friend used my mom's sewing scissors to do the job, it was actually kind of fun. For a little while I was almost hopeful that it wouldn't fall out, but it did eventually. You can lose a surprising amount of hair before it's actually outwardly noticeable.

Through all this, I had some decisions to make. I ended up getting a medical withdraw from school. My roommate/best friend and another of our close friends packed all my stuff from my room at school so I could withdraw from student housing. It was hard being stuck in a single room miles and miles away while my friends were boxing up everything I had there. They brought the boxes with them when they came to visit which were transferred to my parent's car to be taken home with them.

A week or two after induction and another bone marrow biopsy (that's number 3 if you're counting) and the chemo had worked... sort of. Not enough, and I had another round of induction with different chemo drugs. One of them was "affectionately" called smurf juice because of the bright blue color.

It was decided that a bone marrow transplant (BMT) was the best way to go for me. My brother got tested and there was some schist about him being a minor (barely, like less than a month to his 18th) but in the end he wasn't a match. I also didn't have a good enough match on the bone marrow registry, as a caucasian person I had a seventy-something percent chance of finding a match which is actually the highest chances of a match, minorities usually have less than 50% chance. So go register! spread the word! there needs to be more variety on the list to help more people!

What the doctors decided for me was a fairly new procedure: a haploidentical BMT. This meant that a direct relation (parent or child) would be my donor. No kids, so both my parents were tested. At first they decided on my dad, then after further consideration they chose my mom.

Another biopsy and the chemo had done it's job, I had no bone marrow, which means I had no immune system. I still had to stay in my room with occasional walks around the nurses station and that was it. Three times a day walking for thirty minutes in circles around the pod then back to my room again. I think I unconsciously hate the pictures that were along the walls there because that's all I got to look at for more than a month.

I got care packages, which always made me smile and, thankfully, I had almost no side effects from the chemotherapy. People visited, which was really nice. But I was still starting to feel like I wanted to get out. Those last few days in the hospital, I felt like I needed to get out. I don't know how people stay in hospitals for super long term. I was in the Mayo Clinic hospital for all of October and the first week of November. 1month + 1week.

Finally, in November I was released from the hospital with blood tests every other day. The catch? I had to stay within 1 hour of the hospital. I couldn't go home.

If I can live through this, I can do anything.

-Champion by Fall Out Boy