Dying Is Not An Option – Update
Returned to the Mayo Clinic on April 2nd. Had five vials of blood sucked out, and then was scanned from neck to knees a few hours later. I insisted on the Berry-Berry iodine drink. They made me drink an extra dose of the gunk this time, so I wasn’t a happy camper. No matter how cold or how the straw is placed in the pretty bottle just so, it still tasted like crap!
Got to see Doctor R., at exactly 3:00 p.m. (He makes me smile.) He’s so serious and so kind, that you can’t help but feel he wants his patients to live to be a thousand years old. The blood tests were back to the pre-last visit, and he was happy that the CLL/SLL hadn’t mutated into something disastrous.
The scans had made it into his computer, so I got to take a look at the invading leukemia B cells. I’ve got to be honest with you, it’s scary to see them exploding and enlarging within my node systems like that! Imagine AA eggs, and even up to goose egg size, expanding and filling at leisure within your lymphatic system. He pointed out a cluster of normal nodes, (small fingernail size) and then highlighted the nodes that are filling up with the cancer cells from my blood. They’re huge! There’s way too many enlarging nodes to count, and they’re everywhere within the lymphatic system. I even have a run-away node that’s filling with cancer cells on my upper back. The strange lump is not even a part of my lymphatic system. Go figure.
It makes it easier to understand why . . . at some point . . . the lymphatic system must be shrunken down with poisons or an unhealthy cocktail of some kind. (The nodes can only fill and balloon so full before they’re going to begin interfering with my multiple organ systems- heart, liver, spleen and respiratory system etc.)
I don’t have to return for another 3 months, and then just blood work. I’m as stable as I can be, considering the nodes are expanding, but . . . the progression of swelling is slow. So I get a reprieve once again!
It was such a beautiful, gorgeous day for a trip to Scottsdale. The flowers, grass and trees were in full spring bloom. For a moment, I thought I was in a green fantasy land. There’s nothing as breathtaking as spring in the desert. It’s like a brown, worn carpet rolls back and a green lush one takes its place, along with the reddest of red flowers and the most vibrant color pallet imaginable. Plants are blooming everywhere you look. Hundreds of various blooming shrubs and trees with small pink, purple and white flowers are hanging from branches lining the highways. In the flat desert fields beyond, the blaze of color runs on as far as the eye can see. What a transformation! From the burning heat of a summer past, and the dormant sleep of winter, it’s like the world wakes up and says, “Look at me! Aren’t I truly something?”
I couldn’t help but wonder if the people who go to work on that highway each morning see what I saw. Or . . . are they used to the beauty of it all? I hope not! It was worth the trip down to the Mayo to see the birth of a desert land transform into its fullest potential beauty.