Love, Drugs and Cancer

Prolouge:

I have cancer.

If you want to be a little bit more in depth than that, you can say that I have Leukemia. Or you can say that I have AML. Or Acute Myeloid Leukemia. But I think I'll just stick with AML.

AML is when you have a lot of abnormal myeloid cells, which are white blood cells that have something bad in them. I usually don't tend to listen to the details. But these cells are in my bone marrow, therefor I have cancer. Cancerous cells multiply uncontrollably and are harder to kill than your average blood cells. They also don't mature right or function right. 

So living with cancer sucks, as you can imagine. All the odds are working against me. AML is harder to treat than other leukemias. AML is less common in teenagers. I get to be one of the special teenagers with AML. The ones that are hard to come by. Most teens with leukemia get ALL, the one that's easier to treat. Great.  I also don't have any siblings, so having a bone marrow transplant is not really an option, unless I find a stranger that's a match. But I won't take the marrow of a stranger's bones. Doesn't matter if it's life or death. Not to mention they caught the cancer late. I guess that was my fault. I don't like to be fussed over like a child, which is my mom's specialty. So when I started to feel sick, started to feel hot and cold at the same time, I simply didn't mention it. I hid my lymph nodes and I didn't mention how my bones hurt. 

My parents may have never known that I was sick, if I hadn't fallen that one day. It was really icy outside. Typical in Washington state. I was trying to walk out to the car, but it was just too slick and I fell. Right on my back. My parents made such a fuss and dragged me into the house immediately. They were frantic and fussy and I just wanted to get out of there. It really didn't hurt that bad. But they didn't listen. And when they lifted up the back of my shirt to check for injuries, well, it became obvious that something was wrong. Barely two minutes had passed since I had fallen and my back was covered in bruises. Purples, blues, blacks, browns and yellows. All of it. When you have leukemia, you bruise easy. So they brought me in to a doctor right away. A few calls to a specialists, a few tests, and I was diagnosed with AML.

My chances of surviving five years after my initial Chemotherapy is 50%-70%, but my cancer was caught a little late so the doctors gave me 40/60. 40% chance of survival. 60% chance of death.

60% chance of death.

People are always telling me to focus on the positive side of things. They always tell me that there's a chance. They always tell me that there's a big chance. But I don't focus on the 40%. I only focus on the 60%. 

I have a larger chance of death than you have of getting heads when you flip a coin. I have a larger chance of death than I would have if I had spinal cancer, ALL, or many other types. I have recieved the short stick of cancer. 

And now I think I'm going to die.