A Day that Will Live in Infamy - The Story of My Acute Leukemia Diagnosis Part 1

One year ago today, February 4, 2010 - "a date which will live in infamy" I "was suddenly and deliberately attacked by" acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells and my life would change forever. 

Today marks the one year anniversary of the beginning of my battle with leukemia.  The full diagnosis of my leukemia actually occured over three seperate days, Feb 4, Feb 5, and Feb 7.

I thought I would take a change of pace today and tell my story.  I must warn you that I wrote this in as much detail as I can remember, so it is a long post, but I wanted it as accurate as possible.  In order to not keep you on your computer reading for days, this is only Part 1 of a 3 part series.  So go grab a coffee or drink, and enjoy! 
In order to tell the story properly you need a little background information first.  The story actually begins on November 1st, 2009 when I noticed a plantar's wart on my left foot.  I began liquid nitrogen treatments at the doctor's clinic right away because I wanted it gone before we went away to a destination wedding for Amy's best friend in March.

Like most we had bad eating habits over the holidays, so with the New Year, brought new habits.  We started Weight Watchers and working out, in order to get our beach bodies ready for the beaches in March.  Our working out routine wasn't too crazy to start, but started getting us active and building momentum.  We would go for an hour walk after dinner and finish with walking up 15 flights of stairs.  The treatment of my wart, was a bit of hinderance in our working out, because there were some days my foot was too sore to do anything

By the end of January we were starting to see some real results, I had already lost 12 pounds.  Unfortunately the wart was still hanging around and beginning to really frustrate me.  I was starting to think this was no ordinary wart, but a Super Wart where the only thing that could kill it was Kryptonite :)

On February 2, I went left work and went to my bi-weekly wart treatment.  Just before the doctor was about to begin, she noticed some small faint red dots on my feet and lower leg.  She asked me if I had noticed them anywhere else on my body, but I didn't know, so she checked my other foot and found them there too.  She informed me that they were called, Petechiae and wanted to run some standard blood tests.  I had to come back another day to do the blood test, so we proceeded with the wart treatment and then I hobbled home to do some research. 

I found out that Petechiae are broken blood vessels in the skin.  They are an indication of a low platelet count and can be the symptom of a host of different problems.  I remember seeing the word leukemia, but thought nothing of it.  I figured I had one of the viral infections they mentioned in their list of potential reasons for having Petechiae.

I woke up early the next morning to get my bloodwork done before I went into work.  I was really not looking forward to this, and might have put it off, as I was afraid of needles, but my research scared me enough to get my butt out of bed early, and get it over with.  The nurse that took my blood didn't help my fear of needles as she missed my vein twice, before finally painfully jabbing the needle in there.

A couple hours later I found my elbow was sore whenever I straigthened my arm.  Upon inspection I found a fairly large bruise where the blood was taken from, but I figured it was just because I was poked so many times that morning. 

When I got home that night I felt kind of tired so I laid on the bed to rest. We had to do laundry that night and still cook dinner, so that was probably part of the reason for being tired ;)  Amy didn't buy into my tired feeling.  I told her it was because I had low platelets with a smile, but she saw through me and figured I was just trying to get out of laundry.  She was really sweet and made dinner so I could rest a little, but I didn't get out of the laundry :) 

The next day I was starting up some new projects at work and had a day full of meetings, so I went in early to get some pre-reading and prepwork done before my day started.  This day, February 4 2010, will be burnt into my memory for the rest of my life.  Little did I know that in just a few hours my life as I knew it would change forever.

I was drinking my coffee and doing some prepwork when a meeting reminder popped up on my screen that I was due for a meeting in 5 minutes.  This rattled me a bit because I didn't like being late and I knew nothing about this meeting, but then I realized my manager had put in my calendar first thing that morning.  I didn't want to be late, so I packed up my stuff and ran across the Maple Leaf campus to the other building.  The jaunt across the parking actually was a lot harder than it should have been.  Like I said earlier we had been walking everyday up and down the 15 flights of stairs in our building, but this little jog made my legs feel like I had just run 10 miles.  I was running too late to much thought into it and just continued to my destination.  I rode the elevator up with our company's CEO, Michael McCain.  He cracked a couple jokes on the short trip up, and then my floor came up and I was off to my meeting. 

When I got back to my desk there was a voicemail from my doctor asking me to give her a call.  I returned her call, but she was with a patient, so I had to wait 10 minutes for her to call me back.  I tried to decide whether I should start some work or not, but something told me to wait for her phonecall.  It was a very long 10 minutes of curiously wondering what she wanted and cleaning up some of the papers on my desk.

The doctor called right on cue.  She told me that my bloodwork had come back and my platelets were dangerously low (18) and that I should get to an emergency room immediately.  I inquired a little into the direness of the situation, and she told me that there was possibility that my internal organs could start a instantenous bleed, or if I was to fall down or get in some sort of accident, my body wouldn't be able to stop the bleeding.  She told me to come to the doctor's office first to get my blood results, so that I would be admitted quicker into emergency at the hospital.

I got off the phone, shut down my computer, and walked out the building in a daze without saying a word to anyone.  I called my manager on the way out the door to tell him that I just spoke with the doctor and she told me to go the hospital.  I told him I had no idea what was going on and asked him to keep it discreet until I knew more. 

When I got to my car I was still in a daze.  I knew I should be worried, but I didn't know what I was supposed to be worried about.  I called Amy to tell her what was happening, and she agreed to meet me at the apartment, so we could go to the hospital together. 

While driving across the city, the doctor's words about not being able to survive a trauma hit me like a tonne of bricks.  I realized I was playing a little bit of russian roulette driving in my condition, so I put on my 4-way blinkers, slowed down to 40 km/hr, and pulled into the center lane so cars could go around me on each side. 

I made it across the city to the doctor's office without any incident.  When I went in to get the bloodwork, the doctor was waiting to speak to me.  She told me that something else was bothering her with my bloodwork.  My white blood cell count was 8 times higher than normal (86) so my body must be fighting something as well.  This really didn't register with me because I was still preoccupied with thought of potentially bleeding to death.  I left the doctor's office with the blood results and went meet Amy at the apartment.

As she pulled up to pick me up outside our building I had a big smile on my face.  As soon as I got in car I just couldn't resist a "I told you I had low platelet joke".  I laughed, she told me to be quiet with a smile, and off we went to the hospital.  Checking into emergency was pretty typical, we had to wait in the lobby for a couple hours before being brought in to see a doctor.

We were finally brought into the emergency area, which brought on more needles.  I was definitely not happy about this.  They took some more blood which was okay but then proceeded to try and put an IV ino my hand.  I tried to convince the nurse not to but she insisted just in case I was admitted.  From the next hour all I could focus on was the thought of this IV in the vein in my hand.  It is funny because with all that was going on, it was this stupid IV that was giving me the most anxiety.

In all I saw three doctors over the course of the evening.  The first doctor came to examine me.  I told my story which seemed to confuse the doctor a little.  They could see the blood results and knew I should be at the hospital, but other than the faint Petechiae, I had no other symptoms that should have prompted me to be there.  The doctor left without telling us anything.  A second doctor came in and it was the exact same routine.  I told my story, they seemed confused, and left without saying anything. 

At this point Amy and I were a little confused and frustrated since we kept seeing doctors and they weren't telling us anything.  I still had some hope that this was all some big mistake, but I knew that probably wasn't the case.  I still assumed it was some sort of viral infection and I would be out of there later that night.  We had plans for the next night and for Super Bowl on Sunday, and were trying to decide whether or not to cancel them.  Since we didn't know anything, we decided to not tell anyone what was going on until we had some concrete answers.

A third doctor came in to see me and he introduced himself as the Dr of Internal Medicine.  It was pretty much the same story as the first two doctors.  I felt like telling him to read the notes of the first two doctors, but bit my tongue and played along. 

The room we were in just happened to be near the nurses station and we could faintly overhear the doctor there trying to call someone.  Naturally we were really curious since they still hadn't told us anything, so we tried our best to eavesdrop on his phonecall.  Emergency rooms are really loud so it was near impossible to eavesdrop but I was able to make out three words of his phonecall, Princess Margaret Hospital.  I knew PMH only treats one thing, so hearing those words made it feel like the floor dropped out from under me.

The doctor came back into the room and told us that he thought there was a chance I might have a form of leukemia but they needed to run more tests.  He admitted me so that my testing would take place much faster.

I didn't really know what leukemia was, all I knew was that it was some form of cancer.  Since the doctor didn't give a definite answer on what I had, I still had some small hope that the testing would show some sort of infection instead of leukemia. 

Amy and I were still in our work clothes, so after the doctor left she went home to get us some comfortable clothes to wear, feed Dora, and get us some delicious snacks as that was the end of the diet :) We figured there were much bigger things going on in our lives now, we should be able to indulge a little that evening and have some fun.  She brought back all our favorite snacks and we gorged until we were stuffed.  We actually had a really fun time, considering the circumstances, eating our snacks and joking around.  We decided we would try not to worry to much about what was going until after my tests were run first thing the next morning and we had some concrete answers.

Since I was now an admitted patient of the hospital, they needed the emergency room I was in for someone else.  So they moved me to a bed in the hallway while we waited for admission.  What an experience this was!  It felt like was I was in a war hospital straight out of the movies.  The bed I was moved to was literally right in the hallway and the curtain touched every edge of the bed.  To top it off the bed was to short for me.  It was very clausterphobic.  Amy and I wanted to stay together that night so we pulled the curtain tightly closed around the bed so she could hide in there with me.  This didn't help with this undersized bed and I am sure if you were to see us crammed in there it would make one funny picture. 

Emergency departments become different beasts overnight and being in the hallway we had a frontrow ticket to the insanity.  There are so many stories I could tell from this night but the one that sticks out the most was an elderly man that kept looking for his wife.  He would rip his IV out of his hand and go wander down the hallway, bleeding, calling out for his wife (she was at home).  After the third time taking out his IV and going for his trip down the hallway, the nurses proceeded to strap him down to his bed.  This didn't stop his search for his wife, instead of wandering down the hallway he just started yelling out her name.  It actually was very sad and emotional to hear this because you could tell he was scared and just wanted his wife by his side. It was during these moments I was so happy I had smuggled Amy into my tiny little bed with me.

At midnight I was no longer allowed to have any liquids or food because of the CT scan that I was to undergo first thing the next morning.  So obviously at midnight I became insanely thirsty and hungry for the rest of the night.  I would wet my mouth with water to avoid dry mouth.

It didn't matter that the emergency area was so loud and hectic because we didn't sleep much that night.  We just cuddled in the bed chatting, and trying to comfort each other for what was to come the next day. 

A porter came promptly at 8am to take me to my CT scan and begin my second day of diagnosis.  This brings me to the end of the first day of diagnosis, and thus Part 1 of my story.  I will continue the story tomorrow with the events of February 5.

TO CONTINUE THE STORY GO TO - A Second Day of Infamy - The Story of my Acute Leukemia Diagnosis Part 2

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