Adults

On October 3, 2019, I was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) at the age of 58. I was asymptomatic, so I was in total denial that I had leukemia. I had just attended my 40th high school reunion, and I thought my health was great. After leaving the oncologist's office that day, I went home and discovered that I had blood in my urine, or was it post-menopausal bleeding?

July 3, 2021, was the day that my life changed forever. I had been dealing with odd symptoms for months, and after multiple visits with dismissive practitioners, I finally had the ear of a doctor who believed me. A tumor located in my mediastinum was discovered via a CT scan. This news was devastating.

I am a teacher from Texas. My journey to Team and Training wasn’t immediate. I moved to Texas from Louisiana. When I moved to Texas, I decided to start running to meet people and to help with my homesickness.

I was diagnosed with stage 4 acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in 2015. It is not known if Humira (a drug I was prescribed) caused it or just blew up the AML. On the night of diagnosis, I was told the hospital I was in could not treat me, and I would be transferred in the morning.

My story is not all that different from many others. It began with two-year-old me not feeling well and my mom taking me to the pediatrician on a Monday. They diagnosed me with an ear infection and gave me antibiotics. On Friday, still not better, my mom asked my dad if they should let the doctor take another look at me.

When I was 8 years old, I was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL). I shocked the doctors with how I was still alive because I had a mass the size of a grapefruit on my lungs and masses all over my other vital organs. When I was admitted to the hospital, they got chemo going everywhere they possibly could—in my port, my arm, my foot.

The year 2021 was quite a year for us. It was the year of cancer. No one ever really prepares themselves for the diagnosis of cancer, and when you're told you have it, the emotional roller coaster you are about to embark on cannot ever be fully described in words. The fear, the exhaustion, the financial burden, the feeling of helplessness you experience is completely terrifying.

It was July 2014, I got up and went for a quick morning jog before work. It’s Iowa, it was hot and humid, but I was unusually winded after that jog. I figured it was due to being humid outside and finished getting ready to go to work (I was a registered nurse at a physician’s clinic doing triage). During the day, I continued to feel a little winded and noticed I had a cramp in my calf.

In December 1986, a week after my 15th birthday, I was diagnosed with acute undifferentiated leukemia (AUL) after having unclassifiable arthritis for two years. They now believe that I had pre-leukemic arthritis. So, when I was diagnosed, it was a blessing and a curse. It was a curse given how it turned my life upside down.

I was diagnosed with stage 4 mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) in December 2020, but at the time, it was considered to be "indolent." That quickly changed in late February 2021 when I experienced intussusception, a painful telescoping of the bowel into itself requiring hospitalization. A colonoscopy revealed a 7 cm. mass of the cecum, and the biopsy showed that it was MCL.