November 9th, a Monday morning, was the day I learned that I had AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia, spelling may be off). There are three major types of Leukemia that I am aware of, ALL, which is similar to AML in that it is acute thus fast acting, except that it is most common in children, Chronic Leukemia which is much slower acting as I understand, I will attempt to explain that difference in a moment, and of course AML. There are several sub-types of AML, of which I have M4, not sure what that means exactly but I do know that some sub-types call for different treatment and obviously have differing success rates concerning long-term cure.
In my situation my Leukemia was “fast acting” if you will. This means that had I had a blood test in the early part of September their probably would have been no sign of Cancer and I would have been given a clean bill of health.
Hindsight story: I know that towards the end of September my counts had begun to fall as I had an ankle injury during the last week of my soccer season and didn’t know if I could play in the playoffs. I remember looking at my swollen ankle and seeing literally thousands of red dots on my skin, which I now know to have been broken blood vessels, a very common side-affect of low platelets. I did play soccer that night, actually it was the best game I ever played in my life and my ankle did regain it’s original form over the next few weeks. So at the time of my “pass out” my levels were quite low, hemoglobin = 75 (normal = 140-160), platelets = 20 ( normal = 150-450) and my white count was a little high.
Over the course of the next several days, beginning on the weekend just past, my white count would virtually double each day as my body recognized the presence of an infection, i.e. the Leukemia, and simply put the more white cells I produced the more white cells the Leukemia would attack. Again this is my understanding. So finally two days prior to me starting chemo my white cell count stood over 40, a normal count being between 4 and 7. That didn’t take long to check them out, as the chemo dropped the “arse” out of my counts, but I will cover those details later this week.
That will do it for today, November 9th, one year ago. Hope you’re enjoying my flashbacks, I’d love to know your take on them, both those of you who are hearing these stories for the first time and those who remember these days last year.
Fighting and Recovering,
Geoff
#4
