Thursday, November 15, 2012

Cancer round II


I remember the day I faced my worst fear… again.  It was a day like none other. I could feel it in my shoulders as I walked into this jungle of a hospital for the first time.  It was around 7 in the morning.  I thought I was just here for a checkup but it became so much more than that.  I was waiting in the waiting room to be registered when my nose began to bleed.  This scared me.  This made me feel like my cancer was back for some reason.  Eventually my nose stopped bleeding and I finally registered.  I remember talking to the lady that registered me.  I asked her if she saw a lot of 18 year olds in this place.  Unfortunately she said yes.  After I left registration, I went to get my blood checked.  This didn’t take too long, maybe 5 minutes.  After that I was waiting in the waiting room for my doctor to call me in.  He finally did.  I remember sitting on the examination table while my parents were sitting in guest chairs against the wall.  My doctor came in.  He asked me my medical history.  I told him.  Then the part that I wish would have never happened.  He turned on the computer and looked at my blood results.  He saw my white blood cell counts had spiked to 35, well above the normal range.  He casually told me and my parents that he believed that the cancer was back.  In the same breath, he started discussing my treatment.  It very well may have been this moment when I knew I was at the best cancer hospital in the world.  He tells us that he wants me to get on this clinical trial with promising results but says that the trial was at its maximum limit of 90 patients.  He then asks us to wait and he leaves the room.  He leaves us alone for a little more than an hour.  This whole time I feel the tension in my shoulders building.  Tenser and tenser they get.  I am at the point where I want to throw up when my doctor walks in again.  He says that patient 90 dropped out of the trial and the spot was mine …
There is more to this story but I would prefer to take a break and write the rest later.  These are not memories I want to relive all at once.

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