unreliability of life

Just as things were getting back to normal again, I just found out 30 minutes ago that I've relapsed. There are 30% blast cells in my bone marrow (you should have no more than 5% blast cells in your marrow). My platelets and white blood cells are dropping. In 2 days I am going in to surgery to get my catheter placed (on the right side of my chest this time). I will start chemotherapy early next week. If all things go well, I will get a bone marrow transplant at Stanford.

Let me back track a little. On April 24th I had my regular check up with my oncologist and he said everything was looking great. I had normal blood results and was feeling like a million bucks. I had just started working full time again and there were a couple of very interesting projects that I was going to get to work on. My boyfriend just got accepted into business school at Stanford University and we were sooooo excited about starting the next chapter in our lives together.

Just 3 days after my appointment I started having this horrible migraine. After a quick nap I felt much better. I figured it was just a fluke. However the next five days I kept on feeling pressure in my head. There was a voice in the back of my head that was like, "hmmm I wonder if this is what relapsing feels like." I pushed that voice away since I had just seen my oncologist, but I got a blood draw just in case on May 3rd. The results came back on Sunday when I was at Khanh's drive and I found out that there were 7% blast cells in my blood. This was alarming since normal healthy blast cells are suppose to only live in your marrow. The fact that it was in my blood stream was a sign that cancerous blast cells were overcrowding my marrow and getting pushed into my blood. Since my results came on a Sunday my oncologist was not working so I left a bunch of messages to him to figure out what these results mean. I went to bed praying that my results were a fluke.

My oncologist emailed me on Monday when I was at work and wrote

"Michelle,

It looks like relapse. Sorry. I'll have my office call you. I need to do a bone marrow ASPAP, today if possible Around 2:00 PM"

I cried on my director's shoulder and she walked me to my car. I met up with my boyfriend and sister who took me to get the biopsy done. Biopsy was painful as ever, but luckily they got a good sample. I also got an MRI so we can figure out what could be causing my headache.

Yesterday was a long day of waiting, but I didn't get the results until today. My last bit of hope that it wasn't a relapsed was crushed when the surgery appointment person called me to ask when I wanted to get my catheter placed. I rushed to call my oncologist's nurse who then paged my doctor so that he call me with the results. My doctor called 5 minutes later and told me the bad news.

Everything is happening so suddenly. Here we go again.....