It was on July 15th, 2001, 1 year ago, that I was waking up in my buddies apartment in Calgary, Alberta, it was an awesome morning and we were wrapping up a week of Stampeding. Later that day I was to fly to Toronto for a couple of days as I made my way back East to resume my preparation to head back to high schools for the 2001 RealTime Cancer Challenge. It was around 11:00 and as I was about to begin packing I got this pain in my lungs, it was a familiar pain, one that I had many many times before since leaving ICU in 1999, but it was a pain that had never been connected to a source nor had I ever found an effective treatment. Except to curl up on a bed, put some heat on my stomach and wait it out.
I can best describe my lung pain as someone putting an airplane seatbelt around your chest and making sure it is good and tight, that feeling combined with a cramp in your calf that wakes you in the middle of the night with your toes pointed towards the far wall. Kind of like that except in your lungs.
This pain is something I had lots after I left ICU but at this point last summer I hadn’t had it in almost a year and half. After about 15-20 minutes of the pain I looked at my buddy and said “I can’t believe I’m saying this but I have to go the ER”, and it had been well over a year and half since I had been there. But that’s where we went.
Being a little unfamiliar with Calgary we went around the corner to the nearest hospital, which happened to be the Alberta Children’s Hospital. I walked in to the ER, didn’t pay much attention to Barney and the paintings on the walls, sat down at a check-in desk, sat way down, and fortunately they didn’t throw policy at me when I said a few magic words like Leukemia, Bone Marrow Transplant, and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. They quickly took me inside, put me on a bed and into a case room where they began to address my pain and explore what might be happening inside me. Very nice Doc, Dr. Belanger I believe, who actually knew my Hematologist at home, and the team took great care of me and got me comfortable within the hour or so.
I was then moved to the adult hospital, where I learned that ER wait times are much the same all across the country, as it took me over 6 hours to get the results of my blood tests and chest x-ray and to have the Doc say to me “you’re neutropenic, and you know what that means”, I was discharged and decided that Toronto wasn’t happening, it was time to head home and figure out what was happening inside me. So that’s what I did, I took the red-eye home, landed in St. John’s at about 10 a.m. and was at the hospital before 10:30, and the week of exploration began.
I remember this week last year very well, as it was another defining week in my life, decisions I made this week last year have had a major influence on my life, and the lives of others. I also remember during the unknown time that I didn’t have a gut feeling either way, I had no pull towards one possibility or another, and I remember taking the 3 main possibilities – 1. a virus that was dropping my counts, 2. a return of GVH that was dropping my counts, or 3. a relapse of my Leukemia – and developing a strategy for how I would tackle each option. Yes I do love strategy and feel most comfortable when I have plan to go with a Challenge, so I prepared 3 and planned to go with the one that was most appropriate.
We know which plan I went with, and it is because of that plan and the awesome support of so many people, that we are connected in this forum. I said many times last week during my period of unknown, “it is what it is”, and that is always true. I couldn’t, and still can’t, predict the future so I focused my energy on the here and now, and have been making the effort to do that ever since this week last year. As here and now is what we know.
You can be sure you’ll hear from me again this week, have a good one.
Always…
Live Life. Love Life.
Geoff
