Everyday in the hospital my white counts go down a little bit more. Every time they do, I feel like I've achieved a personal victory. My sister, Lacey, and my boyfriend, Keith, are my white count monitors. If they're not there with me for my leukapherisis, they call afterward to find out my count. I'm going down too slowly. By day four I'm still in the high 200,000's. I feel like it's going to take forever for me to get outta here.
And then on my fourth day in the hospital, they decide not to have me undergo leukapheresis. I think they want to see if the medication is working on it's own. My counts go down. Another victory. Finally, the thing inside me - this insidious thing that is trying it's best to kill me - is losing it's fight. And I'm winning mine. I feel triumphant. So now it's just a waiting game.
The nurses are nice to me - I'm on the telemetry ward, so I'm probably their youngest patient - and make small talk while changing my linens and bringing in my meds. They always ask about my family. "Do you have kids?" I do not. I've been on the fence about wanting to have children for awhile now...every time it comes up, I think to myself, not yet! I'm too young. But now it seems like I may have waited too long. Word somehow gets around to my oncologist that I don't have children, and he tells me that while I'm on Gleevec, I should take measures not to become pregnant. (I look it up later and find that Gleevec has been found to cause miscarriage and profound birth defects.) So yeah. That's a little heartbreaking.
No comments:
Post a Comment