by Band Back Together | Sep 22, 2017 | Cancer and Neoplasia, Cancer Survivor, Coping With Cancer, Faith, Happiness, Health, Hope, Leukemia |
Poison Extraction aka Leukemia Part 1
Poison Extraction aka Leukemia Part 2
Twenty years ago today, I was a little girl who had just been on her first major road trip.
My uncles, some family friends, my sister, and I had driven the 20+ hours from Phoenix to Houston. I had no idea what to expect. I was so conflicted because in my mind, Houston, Texas looked like a city from an old western movie. Yet I knew Mom was there at MD Anderson Cancer Center, which is the best cancer treatment center in the world. I had such a hard time picturing this big fancy hospital in the middle of a town made of wood buildings and dirt roads with horses.
Turns out Houston was a lot like Phoenix only GREEN. I’d never seen so many green plants and rainstorms in my young life. And MD Anderson was mind-numbingly huge and complex.
And my mother, well she was a pumpkin.
That was my first thought anyway. When she had left Phoenix she’d had SOME hair left. Now she was completely bald and the medicines they’d given her had made her swell up a fair bit and turn orange. Clearly, my mother was a pumpkin.
She was in an isolation room. I could see her through double-paned glass and talk to her via intercom. I couldn’t hug her or touch her. No one could. The doctors administered drugs to her through long plastic gloves built into the opposite wall and once a week a person in a bubble suit could come through the air lock to clean her room. Everything that came in had to be sterilized.
After 3 days of radiation treatments, where she received the same amount of radiation that you would have at Hiroshima when the bomb went off, Mom had no immune system left. The littlest bug could kill her in a few hours.
I remember watching the day of the transplant. We were all gathered around the window. Momma was SO so excited. She held the catheter line up for us to see as they pushed in 3 BIG fat syringes of bone marrow in through the tubes that came through the wall. She gave us a big cheesy grin and a thumbs up!
Afterwards, we went to check on my Uncle Mike (one of my mother’s younger brothers) who was her bone marrow donor. He had 6 little round needle holes in his butt. 3 of them on each cheek. He told Mom that now he can really say that she was a pain in the ass. (In fact until Mikey passed away 2 years ago, Momma would call him every year and thank him for saving her life. And every year he would say “I love ya sis. You’re welcome but you’re still a pain in the ass” )
That was 20 years ago.
I still bawl like a baby every time I really think about it. I have no words to express how amazingly grateful I am to God, to science, to the doctors and nurses and to my Mother for being a fighter and going to hell and back so that I could grow up with my Mommy. I would not be a live today if it wasn’t for her.
In so many ways, I owe who I am to my amazing mother. You couldn’t ask for a more loving, accepting, caring and compassionate person. Don’t get me wrong – she’ll kick your butt up between your ears if you really need it, but only because she loves you. I think she has done a SUPERB job of balancing being a mother and being a friend, and that’s not an easy line to walk.
For better or for worse, hers is the voice in my head. I found that out when I went to college. She’s the one I hear encouraging me, chastising me, reminding me and helping me.
She hasn’t always been perfect but I can say this: Whenever it has been pointed out to her that something she has said or done was not right or hurtful, she never, EVER did it again.
As a kid, shortly after the transplant, I presented a picture to her transplant physician, Dr. Anderson (who just happens to share a last name with the hospital). It said in big crayon letters “Thank you for saving my Mommy’s life”.
I want to say it again. Preferably through a mega phone from the top of a tall building, on the 6 o’clock news and on the front page of every paper in the world, but I’ll do it here:
Thank you to every one involved in making it happen. Thank so much for saving my Mommy.
Twenty years, baby. Here’s to 20 more and many, many more after that!
by Band Back Together | Sep 20, 2017 | Cancer and Neoplasia, Cancer Survivor, Coping With Cancer, Leukemia, Lung Cancer |
Some background before we begin- My Mother has had cancer 3 times. Starting with Leukemia when I was 8, Melanoma when I was 15 and Mucal Epidermoid Carcinoma, stage 2, when I was 20. My Father also had Lung Cancer (Non-small cell carcinoma, stage 1) when I was 22.
These are my stories.
It was spring. I was 8 years old. Mom found a couple lumps on her neck but we’d been digging in the yard the day before at the new house so she dismissed them as some sort of bug bites….
My parent’s didn’t want to uproot me this close to the end of the school year and so I would get driven to school every morning and then I would walk back to Grandma’s house with my cousin Josh and hang out there until Mom or Dad could pick me up after work.
One day Dad came to get me, I can’t even remember if it was early or late now but I remember it was out of the normal time he usually came. We had to go to the hospital. Momma had “collapsed” at work.
What I found out later was that what actually happened was that my Mom had been walking down the hall way at work (she is an RN) talking to some coworkers and had passed out. She’d shrugged it off as hypoglycemia getting the better of her. But then a few hours later while bending over a patient it happened again. This time they insisted on taking her down to the ER for tests.
We sat for 3 hours waiting on a single blood test. Turns out they tested it on 3 different machines and the results were so off they decided the machines must be broken so they called in a specialist to count it by hand.
I don’t remember what the exact white cell count was. But I remember it was SO massively off what it should have been. Lots of extra zeros. I knew that was bad but at 8 years old I didn’t know much else.
The next day, my Aunt Lois came to stay with us. I really liked Lois, even if I wasn’t so fond of her cooking at the time (she’s my organic aunt). Mom and Dad were just going to go get one test done and see a doctor and then they’d be home.
Momma never came home to that house. In fact she didn’t come home again for nearly a year….
It was me, my little sister, Beth and my cousin Kaydee sitting in the living room floor watching Bambi of all the horribly perverse things when the call came. I remember Lois looking pale and repeating like she couldn’t believe it: “She’s got cancer??”
All I knew about cancer at that time was the week before I’d watched one of those stupid hallmark specials designed to make you bawl your frigging eyes out; the lady had died of cancer because she’d refused treatment so she could deliver a healthy baby.
I turned back to look at the TV in time to catch Bambi wandering alone in the snow asking “Mother? Mother?”
I swear to God I am NOT making that up. I jumped up and shut that TV off as fast as I was capable of. I couldn’t watch Bambi with out FREAKING OUT for 10 years afterward…. I still don’t like that stupid film….
Lois explained that Mommy wasn’t coming home that night. They were admitting her to the hospital straight away to start treatment. My Mother had Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). They even initially misdiagnosed her with another form of Leukemia, maybe it was wishful thinking b/c ALL in adults is bad. Like, usually they have enough time to diagnose you, admit you and then you die, levels of bad. Its more commonly found in children where it takes a much less aggressive course than it does in adults.
In a lot of ways, I look back now and realize my childhood ended in that living room that day. I have a lot more to share. And I will but I can’t right now. Maybe tomorrow….
I am the child of a cancer survivor and this is my story.
Part II
Part III
