Part 2. Battling A Beast

Anyway, after knowing the unwelcome summer guest, we went on to step number two. Behold, chemotherapy! This treatment makes you better and sick at the same time. You might not get it, but it’s easy. It makes you better because the medicine kills the bad cells. But it also kills the good cells since it can’t identify if the cell is good or bad.

Now, the drugs also make you even more sick. The drugs kills the good cells which results to hair falling, nail beds turning into violet and your appetite to back off. And so we went to the hospital back and forth.

On my first chemotherapy, everything was a bit new to my parents, ‘watchers’ and me. Soon, my family learned how to buy medicines with weird names, how to ask for donors for my blood transfusions, get in contact with other leukemia patients and deal with my condition. They also got used to seeing me just lying on the hospital bed either sleeping or doing nothing at all. After the first dose was administered to me, I began to feel nauseated but not exactly right after, maybe after several hours. Then, I began to vomit. Even if I liked the food, my appetite always fought with me and always won. This is what happened the next days of my first chemo session.

My first session lasted for more than a week, and then I was discharged. Expecting that my next chemo was still two weeks away, it was quite a relief. But then, after a week, my temperature abruptly went up. And before I knew it, I was back in the hospital. After the usual laboratory tests, it showed that my platelets were very low. My doctor advised that we quickly secure a platelet donor. After my parents found a donor, my fever was still persistent. Dr. Ong said this was febrile neutropenia and it was expected for leukemia patients that just had chemo.