Day 90

Last night I took my 90th tablet.  Today I had my blood test for my first three monthly checkup.  And tomorrow is the four month anniversary of the day I heard those very unexpected words come out of the doctor's mouth "We think you have Leukaemia." 

Life has not changed very much.  Something you would probably not expect to hear when associated with the word Leukaemia.  Very luckily, I have a form of it that is managed by tablets and seeing as it was caught quite early, should never progress to a stage where I might need chemo or a bone marrow transplant.  Providing I take the drugs properly and don't miss any and that my body responds to them in the way that it should, all should be just as normal.

So far the main changes have been having to take a gigantic tablet every day.  And then getting low potassium and having to take an even more gigantic second tablet each day.  (I'm not doing too good on that front, supposed to take two a day but managing maybe one every second day - they are HUGE)  My white blood cell count has responded really well to the drugs, in fact way too well, and they have gone from 86,000 to at last check about a month ago is only 2200 (it is supposed to be between 4000 and 11,000)  This means I don't have enough good germ fighters and spent the holidays slowly recovering from a cold and cough only to have it come back with a vengeance after two days back at school with snotty children.  I can't really get drunk anymore either, this was tested a week ago when I went out and had five drinks over six hours, with a bush outside the Maccas drive through on the way home copping the results.  On a side note, how embarrassing is it to throw up in public?! Something that hasn't happened since my teenage years.  My sister (who picked me up) thought it was highly amusing.  Thankfully, I am not a huge drinker anyway and I can have one or two and not feel sick so that's not bothering me toooo much. 

I have an appointment in just over two weeks to get the results of my blood test, the first real evidence of whether the drugs are doing their job of killing the leukaemic cells.  I am not too worried, in fact, I am so confident that I booked my appointment for the day before my 30th birthday.  Possibly a bad idea but I am taking the mindset that I will get some really good news for my birthday.  Fingers crossed.

Really though, I still feel like a bit of a fraud.  I don't feel sick.  I don't look sick.  I'm certainly not suggesting that I want to feel or look sick but if I went around telling everyone I have leukaemia I'm sure they would look at me with raised eyebrows.  I don't often talk about it with people who do know (outside of family) because it feels like there is so little to tell and a little bit like it's all just made up in my head.  I'm sure this is me still coming to terms with everything but there you have it.  I haven't rung the Leukaemia Foundation yet either because I feel like I would be wasting their time when they have so many people to help who actually are sick. 

This isn't a fishing for sympathy post, it is just that, at day 90 I feel like I have hit some sort of a milestone and that maybe I should reflect on this.  And also let the world know how proud of myself I am for not missing a single tablet (we'll ignore those potassium ones) in 90 days, no matter how much I gag on them. (I am one of those naughty people who stops taking the antibiotics as soon as she starts to feel better).   I do wonder if I will ever get over my loathing of tablet taking.