Wednesday, January 12, 2011

January 12th, 2011

"Stubbornly persist, and you will find that the limits of your stubbornness go well beyond the stubbornness of your limits." ~Robert Brault

This was the quote I just needed to hear today.

The last several months have been very rough for me. I am in complete remission from Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. That is an incredible blessing. However, being in complete remission does not mean that I do not struggle every day. Going through chemotherapy, going through all of the experimental treatments, going through a hematopoietic stem cell transplant (in layman's terms a bone marrow transplant) did not happen without it's consequences also.

Every day I struggle with the side effects of treatment. Remission, does not mean gone from existence. It does not mean cured. It does not mean I am healthy. It means that they don't see the active disease cells at present. That does not mean they are not there.

Unfortunately I suffer from both acute and chronic graft versus host disease. When I say suffer, I mean suffer, and over the last several months there are aspects that have gotten much worse, and my body has deteriorated. In less than a year, I have gone from literally running around my yard with my great dane and chiihuahua, to having to move in with my mother and sit on a wheeled walker to get to the bathroom. Pain has come and gone in measures that rival the worst pain I have ever felt.

I'm not saying any of this for pity, I'm saying this because I have stubbornly and doggedly persisted for months that this degeneration has been due to neuropathic pain.

Living in Texas, for over 5 months I fought with doctors that it was neuropathic pain. Being brought by my mother back to Washington state and to my original medical team, within a full month, my doctor sat before me and told me that "I definitely have neuropathic pain." And we are proceeding as such.

Stubbornly persist.

The last couple of weeks with correct medical treatment my pain has lessened. It isn't gone by any means, and I still need to use the walker, but I can walk with it, and sometimes without it again.

Stubbornly persist.

Do not give up. I needed to remember that.

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