After the diagnosis

It has been seven months since the doctor gave me the diagnosis of CLL. During those months I have had to come to terms with my new reality. The summer and early autumn, I focused soley on the autoimmune hemolytic anemia and recovery from it. I was very fortunate to have excellent medical care; the treatment worked like a charm and by mid-September I was back to work on a very part time basis. There has been no relapse.

Of course, I "heard" diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia in July 2006. But I didn't know it -- didn't let it into my bones until February 2007.

Autumn turned into winter. I started to spike sudden fevers. Without warning, a great fatique would descend on me leaving me unfit for anything but bed. I began having night sweats (and day sweats too). Since Christmas, these symptoms have been frequent, always surprisingly sudden, leaving me frightened and sad.

One day the thought came to me,
“This is not going away. This is my life.”

This week, after another sudden fever put me to bed, I realized for the first time and said, “I have cancer”.

It has taken me six months to know this,
to say it to myself.

"We so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door,
that we do not see the ones which open for us."
Alexander Graham Bell