COVID-19

March 8, 2020: The day my life changed forever. It was the Sunday before my third year of medical school started back up after spring break. It was also the day I found out I had cancer ― stage 2a Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) to be exact. Nothing that I learned in the past 3-½ years of medical school prepared me for being a patient myself.

On May 24, 2020, at 23 years old, I started getting dizzy out of nowhere. I thought maybe I needed to eat and sleep better, but it got worse. I went to the ER, and they said I was anemic and sent me home. I bought a bunch of food that’s supposed to help anemia, but I kept getting worse, to the point where I couldn’t get up to eat. I would throw up and get dizzy and almost pass out.

At the age of 33, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). I immediately started undergoing treatment which initially consisted of intense induction chemotherapy followed by consolidation chemotherapy and then a haploidentical stem cell transplant. My 64-year-old father was my only donor option as I did not have any matches on the national registry.

At 31, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). As my career was finally taking off as a celebrity makeup artist and I finally felt “grown-up,” it came to a screeching halt. My life became cancer and getting better. Although I struggled with the isolation, I connected with many other patients via social media.

Sudha Bhatnagar moved from India to Massachusetts in 1979. Shortly after, she met her husband and moved to Pennsylvania. At the time, the company she worked for allowed her to work from home because they were based in Massachusetts. 

In 2017, after 44 years of working in the railroad industry, Paul Sauter was just starting to enjoy his retirement when his health started to decline out of nowhere. Typically, he was in extremely good shape and enjoyed long hikes with his wife, Lynn. One day, while on a mountain climb trip in Arizona, Lynn was concerned when she noticed Paul was not his usual athletic self.