It was not until I found myself with my nose deep in the pile of my bedroom carpet, my forehead cut open from the impact of the fall, that I figured that it may be time to go to the hospital. When I got to the emergency room, I did a poor job of conveying how bad I felt. My headache was raging, my mind was dull and I was too tired to talk. It wasn't until my blood pressure suddenly plummetted and I felt an overwhelming pressure squeezing my chest that both they and I figured out that something was seriously wrong. I suddenly felt completely powerless. I realized incredulously that I was dying, even while another voice in me argued that I COULDN'T be dying...

Fortunately for me, they realized the same thing and as I gradually tuned back in, I found myself tubed and wired from every angle. I noticed that people were very different now. No more off-hand chatter about everything being "fine". The blood counts were in. I spent 3 days in Cardiac Intensive care, where they gradually took away the wires and tubes, and did the bone marrow aspiration and CAT scans. Within minutes of receiving the bone marrow results, they had me in an ambulance headed for Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, 2 hours away. During the ride, I was a bit stunned. Here I was, alone, being driven far from my son and my home, with only my pocketbook and a little plastic bag that held the clothes that I had thrown on in the middle of the night four days ago. 

The rest of my family lived out of state. My life as I had known it was sliding away through the rear view window of the ambulance as we crossed the many bridges that linked my coastal town to the rest of the continent. This was my lowest point.

Within minutes of landing in my hospital bed at Hopkins, they collected phone numbers to contact my siblings for bone marrow matches, a bone marrow aspiration, and blood samples, and described my 3 main treatment options. I chose High-Dose Cytoxan without a bone marrow transplant, a new experimental treatment that was having very good results. My reasons were that it was showing no indication of relapses, later incidences of clonal cancers, and would not incur the risks of graft-vs-host disease that occur in people my age. If I had still been in my 20's I would have chosen the BMT.

My four days of Cytoxan were uneventful, except that I had the entertaining diversion of being video taped by ABC TV, who was taping the Hopkins 24/7 series at the time. (My treatment was so uneventful, thank God, that I landed on the cutting room floor). Day 2 of the chemo was also my birthday. It was the most important birthday present that I had ever received. Ten days after the chemo, the day after Thanksgiving, I was released to a local inspected apartment, in the care of my parents. Every day I returned to the hospital's special clinic for BMT patients for growth factor, blood tests, antibiotics and transfusions. On New Year's Eve I was allowed to go back home. They gave me detailed information on how to avoid infections, and set up a Home Health service to deliver the Neupogen and Hickman flushing materials. 

I gave myself the Neupogen shots until my WBC reached 1,000. I flushed the Hickman daily with heparin, and changed the dressing twice weekly. Whenever I left the house, I wore a thick surgical mask. I was very glad it was winter, because I was able to wear a hat and gloves. To decrease the risk of illnesses, I home taught my 15 year old son for a while. Actually, he pretty much taught himself, as I was a bit fuzzy for a while. He also did a pretty good job of handling jobs around the house that I couldn't do. A friend came in regularly to clean for me, which was a tremendous help.

My platelets started to hold their own within a few months. After a platelet transfusion in February, I did not need another again until an appendectomy a year later. My last red cell transfusion was 10 months after diagnosis. It has now been 1 year, 9 months since this whole thing started. My HGB is 11.6, my WBC is 3.6, Neutrafils are 1100, and platelets are 67k. I have returned to work, and pretty much resumed my former life, except that there have been some changes. I now see the incredible beauty of this world that I had missed before, and have definitely changed my priorities. And I will forever be indebted to the many health care professionals that are the reason that I can sit here an hear the rustle of leaves of the tree in my front yard, and watch my cat bake in the morning sun.