Don’t ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion.

Isn’t it unreal, watching those that you care for the most in this world suffer at times or for the long haul? We all see it in the movies and in other people, and it is so easy to contemplate when it isn’t you. No one could have ever prepared me for the movie-like reality that was about to hit my life one day in college during a very pleasant meal with some of the people closest to me. Pain. Aztec-pull-your-heart-out-while-your-still-breathing pain struck my left shoulder at the dinner table. Was I having a pulmonary embolism like the ER doctors thought? Gosh I sure hoped not at the time.

I was scared as they shot the morphine into my veins. Hours went by at the small hospital in Marquette as I waited for my CT scan. I stared at the wall, watching it move as the pain killer numbed my senses. Interesting feeling for sure. The scan didn’t reveal much, only a large spleen which they summed up to being mono. They sent me home with pain killers and a multitude of questions. I tried to continue normal life after that, not being able to comprehend that moment that felt like an eternity. It slipped my mind, I let my ego return to normal and resumed life as usual. That is, until my mono test came back negative. Now the doctors told me that the mono test was probably a false negative. They planned on giving my worries a break at this point though and scheduled me appointments with several specialties the hospital offered. One of these specialties, hematology, assured me that all of their tests would be negative. A doctor, who will remain nameless, assured me over and over again that the BCR/ABL testing that they would perform would be negative. I ended that school year, with my head held high.

A couple of weeks later, while working in a cytogenetics lab on an internship (ironically working with Leukemia type translocations), I received the worst phone call of my life. It was my hematologist, laughing (so very rude) about my misfortune because for some reason there was something funny about the tests he assured me were going to be negative weren’t. They were the exact opposite of that prediction. I tested positive, by their methods, for the BCR/ABL translocation and was appearing to have CML (Chronic Myeloid Leukemia). They would have the tests reflexed to make sure that they were correct. Some of the tests were sent to the lab I was working in, and some were sent to the big clinic down in Rochester. These tests would take several weeks. For the first time in my life, really, my world looked like it was going to be ending very soon. I went from the adventurous ego to complete pain and suffering from that wait. My world had flipped completely upside down and I had to learn that every day was a gift when I woke up. Breathing was a gift, seeing was a gift, being able to show kindness was a gift. Living like I was dying was one of the oddest experiences of my life and one of the most difficult. It changed me permenantly, for better and for worse in certain aspects. Waiting and waiting.

I cant wait to tell you what happened after that, my world was flipped yet again. Please tell the people around you that you love them and that you care about them, you never know when your last chance will be.

Peace, love, all the above

Love, Alex