Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Beginning of the End

ROUND 7

It’s about 1:30 am, Wednesday morning. I’m up, grudgingly, as the steroids have taken full affect. My fate is to lie in bed for hours, tossing and turning in my inability to sleep, so I have decided to do something productive with this free “uninterrupted” time. “Uninterrupted” is used loosely of course.
I guess I’ll start with my Spring Break. On Thursday, after my early morning appointments, my mom and I drove down to my grandparents’ lakehouse for a little vacation before coming back in for round 7 on Tuesday. Thankfully, my dad and Kolby made it down on Friday, and my entire family (minus Kari Ann and Bryan—obviously) was able to spend 2 full days and 2 half days together. My cousin Lyle was at my grandparents—I hadn’t seen him in a year and a half, and the day that he left, my friend Lauren came to spend two days at the lake with us. I felt so blessed to be surrounded by the people I love the most, and amazingly, we were all together at the same time. I came home Monday in the late afternoon, had dinner and dessert with eight sorority sisters and just great friends who came to visit. Now I’m in the hospital. So far nothing worth noting has happened minus getting re-stitched—which hardly qualifies as eventful. I must move around a lot in my sleep or something because two stitches holding the CVC (central venous catheter) to my chest finally pulled out—whoops. I got shot with some novocain, and was painlessly stitched back up. Thank the Lord for modern medicine—I mean that in all seriousness. I don’t understand how people hundreds of years ago dealt with pain. I guess a lot of brandy or any other kind of hard liquor (so I’ve seen in the movies and read in books).
I know in my blog from February 28th, I mentioned a little bit about other patients I’ve encountered here at MDA. I really want to share Tana’s story with you all. I first met her while we were both in the hospital celebrating the New Year. Tana is a sweet yet feisty, small and very self-confident 25 year-old girl or rather young woman. She has AML. She first had it four years ago, and after a long and grueling bout of chemo, she went into remission. AML is not like the cancer that I have. You basically fight it until you go into remission—no 8 round/6 month timeline like mine, and then you just pray that it doesn’t come back. About two weeks before hurricane Ike hit, Tana had just started a great new job, was excitedly making final preparations for her wedding, but she also started to feel sickly. She ignored it, thinking that there was too much going on in her life to worry. She was married in Houston on the day of Hurricane Ike—brave girl, two weeks later she went to MDA to get tested only to find out that the cancer had come back. She had to quit her job; she had to start new treatments, not to mention play her new role as a wife. The doctors told her that her best bet was to have a bone marrow transplant. They eventually found her a match, but he backed out at the last minute, and now they are in search of a new donor. I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of fear and pain that Tana and her family must be feeling—to have an open-ended amount of treatment that didn’t work, only to be let down by a flakey donor. Through it all, she and her mother really and truly amaze me. I won’t forget seeing them in the waiting room, passing out homemade candy bars to everyone for Valentine’s Day. I also won’t forget how unashamed she is to go bald-headed everywhere, and I mean everywhere…Herman park, in the hospital and just about anywhere else. I rarely see her trying to cover her head. I would never be able to do that, I am far too self-conscious, and for this reason and many others, I really respect and look up to her. She is one of the people who give me a reason to not feel sorry for myself. I refuse to let self-pity take over while I see so many other people suffering far worse than I. I say that I refuse, but to clarify, it is definitely a conscious refusal. I have to remind myself all the time when I start to feel that dark cloud settling in over my thoughts.
People always tell me that I am handling this whole situation so well, but that is exactly my problem. I would say generally I’m pretty level-headed and take things in stride, but when I do have “those days,” I don’t talk about it. Actually, I don’t really feel comfortable talking about this whole situation in general most of the time, good day or bad. I have various theories on why I am unable to talk openly about it. First off, I don’t like the attention, I suppose I don’t know how to handle it—it makes me uncomfortable because I am so not used to being an object of pity. Second, I have far too much pride and I guess I don’t want to show weakness, so I put on a brave face and trudge right on through. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it because I do; it’s just the vulnerability that makes me so uncomfortable, thus making it hard to talk about this experience. I would guess though that in the future, when I am better and done, it will be a lot easier to talk about everything in hindsight. So now you know. I’m pretty surprised that I shared all that, but I guess that’s step one, right? Besides, it’s far easier (at least for me) to write rather than talk.
I don’t have that much else going on, but I will keep you updated on my hospital stay. Please pray that my nausea doesn’t get too bad this time around. Also, please continue to pray for my family as we are still separated; I know that it is hard for everyone.

1 comment:

Eric Freeman said...

I laughed when you said that you don't think you're very open about this experience. I'm sure there's a ton you haven't mentioned but I'm definitely learning some lessons about perseverence and faith through what you write. Keep staying honest and open cause you're helping the rest of us prepare for our battles. I'm seeing a sweet storyline with all these people you meet at the hospital. God is undoubtedly putting people like Tana in your life for a good reason. I'm glad that you're growing so much (it shows through what you've been writing). Still praying.

-Rico