Reality Bites

December 24, 2010 - Day Two

Between having x-rays. lumbar punctures and a MRI (which I will tell ya about later) I meet Doctor Asch. She is spitfire and part of the team of 5 doctors that are 'leukemia gurus'. She proceeds to tell me I acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) which is considered the children's leukemia. Honestly, what I do remember of this conversation was she specialized in treating it in children and moved to adults to improve the success rate, and that I am now OLD.  Seriously if I heard if I was 4 instead of 44 again, I was gonna deck her or at least order my walker. It looks like the only options for me are chemo followed by a bone marrow transplant. AND....kaboom (this is the bomb dropping).....I could be in the hospital 6 to 8 weeks this time and was looking at about the same amount of time for the transplant with about a year of recovery.  Yes....I cried. I think this is when we really started to believe what was going on.

Now I promised to tell you about the MRI, so here it goes. How many of you watch House (me. me. me) When they show the people having MRIs on the brain in the show they are laying on a flat board and partially in the machine. Right? Well this is true to some degree; however, what they don't show you is they imobilize your head, which isn't too bad, but then they proceed to snap on what appears to be a goalie mask. Seriously, I didn't dare open my eyes. Even with the Valium I think I started to hyperventilate. It took every ounce of will power, and relaxation to keep me there. I felt like Hannibal Lecter "Hello Clarice".