October 24, 2009

My Journey From Illness to Wellness

(I am posting this article since the Big C Magazine website, where this was published in a slightly edited form, is not active. This was written by my 12-year old daughter Yam as she recalled her battle with leukemia. Except for the title, the sub-headings and some minor checks, I am posting the article as she wrote it.)

An Unwelcome Summer Guest

Imagine this. It’s the last day of school in March 2006. Two months of summer is right in front of you. Then, a fever welcomes it. And after missing the first week of the wonderful summer, BOOM!, a bomb of cancer has exploded in your body.

Pretty bad, right? But with medicine, modern technology, tons of love from friends and family and all the help you could get from the whole universe (especially from up above the heavens), it would be an unforgettable chapter to write in your book of life.

A 10-year-old girl was alone at home, lying on the bed. Her family was out to attend her brother’s graduation. She couldn’t come because of a dreadful fever she had, on and off, for almost a week. I was that little girl.

A few days after that, my parents decided to bring me to the hospital, thinking that it might be something serious. I was admitted then and there, and the diagnosis - pallor and anemia. On the third day, my doctor, Dr. Jeannie B. Ong, considered pre-leukemia because of the presence of many immature cells in my bone marrow. It wasn’t long before we found out that it really was Acute Myelogenous Leukemia or AML.

Honestly, I don’t remember what I felt that time when I was told I had cancer. All I knew about cancer at that time was that it was something severe. Plainly put, a severe disease in you body. And from what I have seen in the television, people with leukemia lose their hair. Man, I wasn’t ready to lose my hair that time! NO WAY!

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.

The Beast Strikes Hard

Few days after my first chemotherapy session, when I awoke from my sleep, my hair was all messed up. My sister, whose favorite subject is me, offered to comb my hair. I accepted her offer since I can’t comb my hair because my right hand was connected to the intravenous (IV) feeding bottle.

I sat on the bed and gave her the comb. After a while, she fell silent. “Yam,” she said showing me a handful of black hair. That black hair was mine. The sight of my hair falling around the white sheets each day saddened me. All my mom and sister could do was save my fallen hair in a plastic bag. To make a sad fact alluring, I joked to them “Pwede na yan na ipagawa na wig ni daddy!” (You can save my hair for Daddy's wig)

Fighting Back With An Army

Well, I knew I had to keep fighting even though I was already semi-bald. So, after I was discharged from the hospital, we went on with the second and third session. After the second session, my doctor announced that I was already on remission. And the same thing after the third session.

Being on remission means that there are no more cancer cells in my bone marrow and that I was ready for a Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT). The transplant would increase my chances of not having a relapse. Now all we need to do was to find a compatible donor and raise funds for the operation, which at that time costed about Php 2-3 M.

According to experts, it’s difficult to find a matched donor. But with me having three siblings, there is a good chance that one of them could a match. We started off with my sister. We were subjected to HLA typing. HLA means Human Leukocyte Antigen. It has something to do with the nature of our blood and bone marrow. Unluckily, she wasn’t a match. Next was my eldest brother. This time, we were compatible.

After knowing that my brother and I were a match, my doctor immediately told my parents the names of doctors in Manila who could possibly do the transplant. Every time my father would go to Manila for meetings, he would find time to talk to them. Back here in Davao, my brother and I were busy with a series of blood tests in preparation for the BMT. While occupied with the tests, we were also busy with the funds for the transplant.

And by that time, my school, the Philippine Women’s College of Davao, already knew about my condition. They also began fund raising events to help in my operation. On the second week of September 2006, my parents, helper and I went to Manila. My sister was left here in Davao together with our other helper and two of our mom’s colleagues. My dad had a high school classmate living near Asian Hospital (the hospital where I was to be admitted) who gladly invited us to stay with them while there in Manila.

Before I was admitted at the hospital, we went to the Philippine Charity and Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to claim our grant. They gave us a big amount of money for the transplant. Then we went to meet my two new, handsome doctors, (they’d hate me if I didn’t write handsome there) Dr. Francisco Lopez and Dr. Allan Racho. A few days after that, I was finally admitted in the hospital and in no time, I was in the operation room for the insertion of the central line. My mom was there with me. Of course, I was asleep the whole time because if I were awake, it would be so unpleasant. After the insertion, I woke up at the recovery room. Then I was brought back to room 713, my domain for the next three weeks.

Before harvesting stem cells from my brother, I went through a last round of chemotherapy. Days before the transplant itself, my brother was given shots of GCSF. That’s the acronym for Granulocyte Colony-Stimulating Factor. Its purpose is to increase the stem cell production and to enable the stem cells to come out of the marrow and into the bloodstream. What my brother is going to donate is his stem cells not the marrow itself. Stem cells are the ones that come out of the bone marrow and eventually become the blood cells.

Defeating the Beast

My routine was still the same; weekly lab tests, consultations, medicine, you name it. In early January 2007, we went back to Manila to attend the BMT party that was held yearly. Other leukemia survivors also attended. It was also in that month that I was to reach my 100th day post transplant. I forgot how we celebrated that milestone, but I was happy that time.

Over the next months, I started taking the examinations from our school. Fortunately, they allowed me to have a home study program since I have this condition. A teacher from school comes to our house every week to administer the test. During the summer, my friends from school kept on calling me, which was good because I missed them so much. Most calls were from Karla and Elaine, two of my closest friends. We were also informed that I somehow managed to pass all of my tests, meaning if I planned to go to school the next opening, I would be a sixth grader.

June came, which meant school. And it meant the same for me. I went to school; I sort of looked different especially with the hair. You see, before I got the disease, my hair was straight. Now, it’s curly, the very reason why I’m now known as ‘curly tops’ in our batch. I saw my most of my classmates back when I was in grade four.

But it was different now; I was already in grade six. My teachers already knew about my condition and asked me how I was doing. I attended school from June up to August with some absences in between because of occasional fever. At the start of September, we went to nearby Panabo City to attend a Science Quiz Bee. There were three students representing each school and I was one of the three from ours. We went back to Davao in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we didn’t enter the next round of tests for the quiz bee.

Survivor Me

This time, the whole family was present. I mean the WHOLE, man! (Excluding the lolos and lolas okay? Just the six of us.) They were all home because of Christmas break, which helped me a lot.

I was discharged from the hospital after ten days meaning I missed the party and I celebrated Christmas in the hospital. NO BIGGIE! At least I’m still alive, right? Since I didn’t celebrate Christmas that lively, I planned to make it up for New Year.

New Year was a blast. The usual family photo shoot and Media Noche (though we ate it after New Year) was still made. Not to mention, all the pictures were not serious. I mean, not a single shot was fit to be put in a frame! But who cares? We had a lot of fun!

The following day, my sister had to go back to Manila. Seriously, why do the need to be back at school by January 3?

Then, both my brothers went back to their work places. And so, I was again left alone. But I was happy despite that.

While writing this article, I remembered what my friend Karla always says to me. She always says that I’m unlucky yet I’m still lucky. I guess now, I absorbed what that really meant. It meant I was unlucky because I got this cancer but still lucky because I also got friends and family that would never leave me. And that’s more powerful than the disease I got in my body, which made me hang on and fight and it also made me realize that I wasn’t alone.

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