I was 28, married for two years, and my husband and I had just celebrated our one-year anniversary at my business, Gigi’s Cupcakes. We were happy and healthy and ready to start thinking about having a family. Life was perfect!
On March 30, 2012, that all changed. I had gone to see my physician for bruising on my legs. After undergoing a couple of lab tests, my doctor informed me that in all his years of medicine, he had never seen a white blood cell count that high. He couldn’t fathom it was correct, but if it indeed was, I either had leukemia or lymphoma. I will never forget the numbness I felt when those words came out of his mouth. He called back that afternoon with confirmation of our worst fears and said I was to go see a hematologist/oncologist the next morning.
Having to call my husband home from work to tell him the news was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. After the longest night of my life, we went to see Dr. Grant Lewis at Summit Cancer Care for my appointment. By the way, that man is my angel. After lots of blood work and a bone marrow test, they confirmed it was indeed leukemia, but they weren’t yet sure what kind.
As I was waiting to be assigned a room in the hospital, my doctor came back for yet another bombshell: “I have good news and I have bad news. Good news is it looks like chronic myeloid leukemia; bad news is that you are pregnant.”