The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth, but you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!

Rocky Balboa

This quote will always have a very special place in my heart. I remember the lowest of the low points. The point at which the world had knocked me on my knees and drug me through gravel. Sitting in bed not even wanting to move or eat because what was the point. Doctors calls and appointments seemed to flood my life. Over and over again, people would ask me if I was alright and I would tell them of course. Only those closest to me knew I had broken. My overinflated ego had deflated so quickly it wasn’t even funny.

To makes things worse, the next step to confirm and understand my prognosis was all of the reflex testing. This reflex testing involved taking some of my bone marrow and look at how bad the damage was to my precursor cells that lay in wait within my marrow. I agreed quickly to this reality, knowing that I really didn’t have that much of a choice. The choice was check and see how far along the cancer had eaten away at my insides or just wait in ignorant bliss until one day I wouldn’t wake up. I remember not being able to take in anyone with me to have them take this sample. I was absolutely running circles in my head and I could feel my heart thumping so very hard. They stripped me down to only a gown with my ass hanging out (pelvic region) and hooked me up to a heart monitor. I remember the nurses came in first and started giving me some pain killers to lower my heart rate, because at rest in the fetal position I was measuring somewhere in the 180 beats-per-minute range. They gave me my first dose of the sedative and I remember telling them, “Ill take a double bartender”. The surgeon came in and started prepping the needle, telling the techs around him that he would need to take a bone biopsy as well which I knew wouldn’t be pleasant. I could feel my heart rate slowly starting to get better though as the drugs started to take effect. This, of course, was absolutely obliterated when I found out I would have to be doing this awake… Heart shot right back up, drugs or no drugs, sobriety had a way of finding me. Surgeon tried to come up to me and start the procedure, but the nurses told him that he may want to wait until my heart rate went down or I may go into cardiac arrest from the needle. He didn’t wait. He plunged that thick needle straight into my iliac crest and… it definitely was not a recommendable experience. The pain wasn’t bad but the grinding of bone to get the biopsy brought tears to my eyes.

I went to eat after that, with my dad and my girlfriend at the time. I sat there staring at the wall. Do I fight this? Is it worth it? It seemed too easy to give up. I had remembered all of the things that I had fought for up to that point. I had to choose life. I had and have way too many people that I need to be here for. I have so many things I want in life. I have so many things I want to be in life. I have so many ideas I want to share with the world. The instant that I had to fight to keep living, is the moment that I realized truly the only thing that matters in this world is being the change we want to see. We don’t know how long we have, but we can change something for the better. My huge flame of life had been diminished to a small spark. I had to make a choice. Do I tell death “not today”, or do I help smother the spark by staying down?

This choice lingered for those test results to come in. I went to the cathedral every single day in Marquette and just sat in the beauty. Hoping for a miracle. Hoping for anything but my demise. My life flashed before my eyes and the only thing I could focus on was some of the mistakes that I had made that had negatively impacted others. Why was I fixated on this? Probably guilt. But regardless, I wouldn’t let myself end my story that way. I always had wanted to make a positive change in life, and I was determined to do that. Even if I had been alarmed of not very much time to do so. I tried to make as many people happy every day that I could.

Even while working within a cytogenetics lab at the time of waiting for these results like I had told you in my last post, I tried to stay positive and keep learning. It was almost easier to try and forget I was dying. Try and be normal again. But it didn’t help being in the same lab with the people who were looking at my samples (some of my tests were done their and the others were sent to Rochester). Everyone did an excellent job not sharing any information with me, they were all very professional, even if I had secretly wanted to know more. These people knew how bad my cells looked… I remember having very real conversations with people about how I would handle chemotherapy treatment and having an internship at Mayo Clinic at the same time would be. I remember being terrified. And then I got a call from my small-town doctor…

All of my tests came back negative. No Philadelphia chromosome. No CML yet. No BCR/ABL. I was so happy! So proud that my body hadn’t failed me yet. But then I remembered… Now what? I have a huge spleen. No answers.

My doctor referred me to the clinic that I would be interning at… We went a month early before I started here and saw every different specialty that they could think of. On top of that, I started developing a constant choking sensation. This was a huge turning point in this story. But it didn’t stop here. I knew the fight had only just begun. Stay tuned for more everyone.