Inspirational Stories

On Monday, February 8, I found out that I was pregnant. It was very early, but there it was two lines. On Wednesday, February 10, I told my parents and mother-in-law, and we were all so excited, so excited that on Saturday, just for fun, we went to BuyBuy Baby. On Sunday, February 14, I went to a nice Valentine’s dinner with Ethan, and when we got home, I noticed a tiny drop of blood on my underwear. By Tuesday, I called the doctor because I was still spotting, but everything else was fine, and it wasn’t a lot. On Wednesday, February 17, at 4:30 p.m., intuition told me I was having a miscarriage.

By that Friday, it was confirmed. From there on out, there were times I felt so tired, my body felt heavy, my vision would go black, and when I closed my eyes, I would see bright colors and weird shapes. There were times that I was so cold that I felt like I had a fever, and then in the morning, I was fine. I had been in contact with my doctor, and I was showing signs of being anemic. He took blood tests, and he didn’t have answers. So, finally on Tuesday, March 30, I had an appointment with a blood specialist. He drew more blood, and on March 31, I got a personal call from the doctor. He asked if I would be okay being admitted to the hospital for a blood transfusion because I had lost almost four units of blood. He also wanted a bone marrow sample to make sure my body was producing blood.

However, the tests found something else. On Thursday, April 1, I was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) that was attacking my blood and bone marrow. We caught it early, and I started chemo on Friday, April 2. They decided to take the pediatrics route, which is very intense. I ended up falling two weeks later because I became chemo toxic from lesions on my liver that were caused by birth control medicine that I had taken over the years. I was unable to do my last round of chemo. After five weeks in the hospital, I was sent home only to come back and be readmitted two days later for a staph infection. We had to treat that for six weeks. In the meantime, we talked about a bone marrow transplant. I ended up receiving a 10/10 unrelated donor match on October 1. I’m currently in remission and just trying to live my life during a crazy time.