Blogging for Blood Cancer

I just came across this on Because I Was Taught To Share & wish I had found it sooner.




From Goodies for Mom:

This first time event will bring bloggers from across the United States together to raise awareness for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and its mission to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. We have lots of great prizes to be won for bloggers and non-bloggers.

Make sure to visit the Friends of Heroes blog each day during the event for a chance to win these great prizes as you learn more blood cancer and The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society..

Here goes my "Blog for Blood Cancer". I apologize in advance for the length, but it is a personal story & I can't seem to cut anything else out.


About 74,340 Americans will be diagnosed with lymphoma in 2008. That doesn't sound like a big number...until it happens to someone you know or love. Then even one is too many.

I, personally, have lost a friend to Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and this has become my #1 charity to support from the moment she was diagnosed back in 1996.

Grab a tissue & I'll give tell you my story.

Please ignore the typos, etc... as I cannot talk about this without tearing up.

Here we go...

In the summer of 1995, I was hanging out with some friends at a bar when I met Diana. She just came up to our table & started chatting. We hit it off & became 'friends at first sight'.

She was a single mom to a 2 year old daughter knicknamed Bean, who promptly decided I was her aunt & I loved her like a neice.

It was amazing how close she & I (and her family) all became. We're talking a matter of months, but if felt like I'd known them & been a part of their family for years.

Fast forward to the fall and I notice over the course of about a month that Di was getting more & more tired plus she started losing a lot of weight. She chalked it up towards working a second job a few nights a week.

One day she called & asked me to come over to look at something. She had a swollen gland on her neck. I had been working in medicine for about 3 years at this point, and my very first thought was mono, so I asked her to see a doctor as soon as possible.


It wasn't mono...it was far worse.

Cancer

After blood work, a biopsy, & CT Scan we were told it was Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Lymphoma is a type of cancer involving cells of the immune system. This system involves channels that connect thousands of lymph nodes throughout the body. Lymph flows through the lymph nodes, as well as through other lymphatic tissues including the spleen, the tonsils, the bone marrow, and the thymus gland.
In lymphoma, abnormal lymphocytes travel from one lymph node to the next, and sometimes to organs. While lymphomas are often confined to lymph nodes and other lymphatic tissue, they can spread to other types of tissue almost anywhere in the body.


It was agressive & her spleen was fully involved.


She was 24 years old & they said she probably had about 6 months to live.


Chemo & radition plus a veritable pharmacy of medications followed. Hospital visits - some long, some short - happened frequently.

Through it all though she was positive, & determined to live life as she had before the diagnosis.
We still went dancing and out to concerts.
We hung out at home when she was too tired to leave the house.

When her hair started falling out she asked her sister, a stylist, to buzz the rest so it would be more uniform. I bought her a hat to protect her newly shorn head from sunburn & we started experimenting with various head wraps.

When Di was in the hospital I'd come up after work, bring her 'outside food' & we'd giggle over her hot oncologist.

We all made an effort to be as 'normal' as possible.

That winter she moved back into her parent's house. I gave up my apartment & moved into her house to help keep it up until they could sell it in the spring. I moved into a house not far from her that April and continued living half at her (parent's) house & half at my own.

She tried to teach me how to drive a stick shift that summer. I'll never forget how she made me take the road from her parent's house that had a stop sign at the top of a steep hill. I killed that truck so many times that the firemen came out of the station that was on the corner to check on us. We were laughing like loons & flirting with the firemen in no time.

Her family went camping that summer & invited me along. We sat up late both nights talking around the fire after we'd put Bean to bed. We never talked about the cancer or the 'what ifs'. We talked about our dreams instead.

I met my future husband that fall & Diana pushed me to spend more time with him. I started becoming more wrapped up in my own life & knew she was happy for me. We still talked all the time, but I "moved out" of her house & moved back into my own full time.


1997 came & Diana was still with us. Despite the threat of '6 months' she had already made it over a year. Remission phases were brief. She would show some improvement & be stable for a few months but the cancer never actually lessened.

Stability ended in the early spring and the cancer started to grow again.

She came to see me one day in the spring. Walked in to the living room, all smiles, took off her hat & said "I want to talk about my funeral.".
This is a conversation I knew she needed to have, but man, was it hard.

A CT scan in late summer showed the cancer had spread throughout her body. New treatments were tried but the cancer was not yielding, and after lots of discussion with the experts & her family, she decided it was time to stop treatment.


By late fall Diana started to fade & then she became jaundiced as her liver function was effected by the cancer.

Out of everything, the jaundice really bothered her the most. She said it was like the cancer laughing at her every time she looked in the mirror.

My boyfriend (now husband) & I spent Christmas morning with them. As we watched my boyfriend put together Bean's new Barbie car, she told me she thought he was the one for me & she was glad I'd found my soul mate.

We hugged good-bye and that was the last time I ever saw her.

We talked on the phone on New Year's Day 1998. I was flying out the next day for a week of training at the new job I'd just gotten. She was excited for me & sounded upbeat but I could hear how tired she was. I worried about going but didn't have a choice.


I got the phone call on the 4th of January. Her mom had talked to my boyfriend and he gave her the number to my hotel room because she wanted to talk to me herself.

When I hung up the phone I just sank down to the floor of that empty hotel room & cried like a baby.

She was 26 years old when she died. Her daughter was 4 years old.

No matter that I knew it was coming, it was still a shock to hear. I was dazed. I felt empty. I think we were sisters in our hearts and that small part of mine just shut down in protest.


To top it all off, I was stuck in another state & would miss her funeral services.

I felt like the worst friend ever, but her mom told me Di would want me to stay where I was & concentrate best I could on my job training. I felt horrible, but knew she was right & that I had to stay.


Her mom & dad became legal guardians of Bean. They moved east a few months later to be closer to some extended family. I exchange holiday cards, birthday cards & send gifts to Bean.

I get a picture every year & can't get over how big she has gotten. I'll always have this memory of her riding in my car, window rolled down & holding a french fry in the breeze because it was too hot to eat. lol We'd been out buying a birthday gift for her mom & grabbed lunch at McDonalds (a big treat).

It has been 10 years, but sometimes it feels like it just happened. It still hurts, and I still cry to think about it, but I savour the good times, too.

When I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, my only name request was that her middle be Diane or Diana to honor the memory of one of the best friends I have ever had. My husband thought it was a wonderful idea. Sometimes I tell my daughter stories about the fun things Di & I did and what a great friend she was. She knows her middle name has a special meaning for me & was so proud the day she learned how to write it.


I always take a moment on January 4th to think of her and all the good times we had. I also take a moment to make a donation to my local chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Every little bit helps. Maybe that donation could help someone out there like Di.

If you're feeling generous, or want to learn more about blood cancers, please visit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.


If you'd like to help spread the word about Blood Cancers, please check out Friends of Heros and/or post your own Blog for Blood Cancer.



Thank you for sharing this with me.