Meeting the Oncologist

One of the most humbling experiences of my life was sitting in the waiting room of the Utah Cancer Specialist office. This is as real as it gets. As I sat there with my wife and our good friend “Nana Jo” I honestly reached over and pinched myself to make sure this wasn’t some bad nightmare. How could this be happening? How did I go from running the Half Marathon in SLC 3 months ago to waiting for my named to be called at a Cancer Clinic. Is this for real? Does this really happen to guys my age? As I looked around, not only was I the only one with all of my hair, I had to be the youngest person in the room by at least 20 years. I didn’t know if I should start to cry or just make a mad dash for the door. And then, it was official, they called my name.

We went through the normal of getting weighed, (now down a total of 22lbs)taking my blood pressure, and getting blood drawn and then they took us to our room. As we waited, we went through our 2 pages of questions we had for the doctor. As the Doctor walked in, you could tell right from the beginning that she was a good person and was very nice. She began by going through the results and explaining what was normal and what was my numbers. Everything was off the charts. White Blood count was high, Red was low. She went on to explain that she was about 99% sure that the type of Leukemia I have was in fact CML but would not know for sure until a bone marrow test was done. So we scheduled the bone marrow test for the following Friday.


Bone Marrow Test

When they first told me that I would need a bone morrow test, I didn’t think too much of it, but now that I have gone though one, it’s one of the worst pains I have every felt. The only place they can take the marrow from is right on your tail bone. They numb the area like a dentist would numb your tooth before he yanks it out. Once the area is numb, they start to take the bone marrow out. At first, is wasn’t so bad than after a while it really started to hurt. The worst part was looking over at my wife, who was watching, had the most pain stricken look on her face that I had ever seen. I knew it was hurting, but to see the pain on her face was hurting me. Than right when I thought it was over, the Doctor said “this may pinch a little” ……Let’s just say words started flying out of my month faster than I could stop them. The good part is, that was over. The bad part, I have to do it again in December. Hopefully it won’t be as bad (at least that’s what I tell myself).