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In February of 1993, I was just your average 23 year old female, happy at having dropped 10 pounds, feeling tired from trying to keep up with a busy work, school and social schedule. Apparently, this was symptomatic. My view of my normalcy changed rather rapidly after an annual visit to my GP for my annual physical. Granted, my back left rib had been hurting, but I thought I'd thrown it out from exercising too vigorously. Dr. Goldberg, my GP, noticed that my spleen was enlarged, and made me get blood work done right away. Since he usually let me get away with getting blood work done later rather than sooner due to the fact that I am a needle wimp. I suppose I should have realized something was up. Hindsight is 20/20 they say. Thinking nothing of it, I went home. This particular week was my reading week at York University. The very next day, Friday, Dr. Goldberg called me and asked " How are you feeling?" My reply was "Well, I'm tired...." He continued by saying there were some abnormalities in my blood work, and he felt it was necessary for me to come into the hospital to have some further testing done. I asked naively, " Well, what do you think it is?" He replied, rather too unconcernedly "oh it could just be a viral infection or heaven forbid, leukemia! " I realized later, he didn't want to tell me over the phone, but didn't want me to be completely unprepared. He asked if I had any family who could bring me in right away.(My parents live in Ottawa, while I live in Toronto. This particular weekend they actually happened to be in Barrie for a ski weekend.) At any rate, he insisted he contact my brother, Doug, and sister- in-law, Margo to come and pick me up. It took a couple of hours for them to come and they were all teary and upset. You'd think I would have figured it out by now... ignorance is bliss, I guess. Doug's immediate reaction was to say " I think we should call Mum and Dad." Since I was still blissfully unaware, or ignoring the warning signals that were being sent, my response was "Oh no, there's no point in ruining their weekend too." So we set off to Peel Memorial Hospital, Brampton which is about a forty-five minute drive from down-town Toronto where I live. We were actually whisked pretty quickly through emergency once there. I still remember the nurse taking patient information from me saying " you are the person with chronic myelogenous leukemia?!" Needless to say I freaked out! "No, not me, I don't have leukemia!" No one had warned her that I didn't know. Obviously, at this point I gave in to the inevitable and allowed Doug to call my parents. I needed my mum. I spent the entire weekend plus Monday and Tuesday morning in hospital. I experienced my very first bone marrow biopsy (which by the way is much more painful, at least the first time, then the process a donor goes through when he or she donates marrow. My donor said her donation was quite easy and pain-free. But more on this later. I think I humiliated my mother that day, although she denies it, as I swore, screamed and cursed a blue streak during that procedure. |
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