Day 3728 - An Extra Decade

It feels like just yesterday we had high-microbial foods and a cancer piñata at my five-year remission party, but here we are in 2021...

I often have to look up the actual date of my "remission" anniversary because 1) I didn't realize that it was an official declaration of being in remission, and 2) I had just woken up from anesthesia and was on a 96-hour chemo drip. I just remember it was the day before Thanksgiving, and my doctor happily told me they found no traces of leukemia in my bone marrow, even with the extremely sensitive genetic testing.

My immediate reaction and feelings surrounding my diagnosis were beyond the idea of just, "I'm going to die." I've described it as seeing my future flash before my eyes and all of the things I would never get to do. Ten years later, I find it so meaningful to briefly put myself in that post-diagnosis mindset, and then flash forward through all the things I've done and experienced since then, both the good and the bad. I graduated college. I published a book. I had a suicidal breakdown. I got married. I lost my dad. I got my master's degree. I've raised over $32,000 for the LLS. I've traveled, I've performed, I've worked, I've had fun adventures, and most importantly, I've met so many people and made so, so, SO many friends.

And that last part is what stands out to me the most. There are so many important people in my life whom I never would have met if I hadn't been given this last decade.

And I don't need to say much more other than, thank you. Thank you to God for helping me heal. Thank you to my brilliant doctors for successfully treating me. Thank you to my family, especially my dad, who would work the night shift and drive me in to the hospital every morning. Thank you to my friends who supported me and kept me in their lives even when I couldn't be physically present. Thank you to all the amazing people who have touched my life over these last ten years. These were years that I thought were lost to me in September 2011. But now I'm at a point in my life where I am so genuinely happy, and I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the crazy, twisted, incredible road that brought me to this exact moment.

Here's to many more decades to come!

Day 3380 - I'll Be [Staying] Home For Christmas

Exactly 9 years ago, I was in my house in Dumont having a panic attack because my temperature was 100.6०F. It had a whole different meaning back then. A fever while I was neutropenic meant I had to be admitted to the hospital and put on IV antibiotics until my counts recovered, which could take weeks. So when I saw that "100.6" in mid-December, I knew that meant I'd be inpatient for Christmas.

Fast forward to 2020, and oh, what a year it has been! After a shitty year full of sickness, death, and despair, we're coming up on the holidays, and instead of being able to look forward to gathering with friends and family, we're grappling with the reality of how unsafe it could be and how it probably shouldn't happen.

Last week, after seeing the COVID cases spike to record levels not just in Rochester, but all over the country, Derek and I were discussing whether we would go back to Dumont for Christmas, and we agreed there wasn't really any way to justify it; there's no way we could do it safely, and it'd end up being more stressful than fun. We're scientists. We know this is the right decision.

My emotional brain, on the other hand, is not having it. I spent a significant amount of time last week crying and being generally miserable about not going home. The fact is, I have NEVER not spent Christmas Eve with my family. Even in 2011, when I was hospitalized, my doctors gave me a "day pass" to have Christmas Eve dinner at home and open gifts with my family. They always try to give people a pass around the holidays, or who knows, maybe they just heard me weepily singing "I'll Be Home For Christmas" in my hospital bed, desperately willing my bone marrow to grow some cells (true story), but regardless, they made it happen. I was recovering from my 6th round of induction chemo, my white blood cells were at an immeasurable level, and it was unsafe for me to eat salads or have fresh flowers in my room, but the nurses hung my antibiotic in the afternoon, and I had six hours at home before I needed to be back for my next dose.

And now we're here. Derek and I have been very lucky during the pandemic; we're both working, we've been healthy, and we don't kids or elderly family members to worry about. Sure, we've had some disappointments, like cancelled trips, limited social engagements, the same as everyone else in the world, but nothing unmanageable. Still, that all feels like nothing compared to missing Christmas. Even at my absolute sickest and most vulnerable, during a year where I was constantly experiencing loss, I found a way to celebrate with my family. And this year, I can't.

Luckily, my sadness has been short-lived, and I've decided just to accept and embrace it. We're not going, but we'll make the most of it. I've started buying gifts for EVERYONE and annoying the hell outta my mom to take inventory of them when they arrive at the house (I make my presence known, even from 300 miles away). We're brainstorming what kinds of fish we want to make for our Christmas Eve dinner, and then we'll FaceTime in to show off our feast. I was even thinking I'd learn a bunch of holiday songs and do a mini-concert on Facebook live or something. I'll get in the spirit!

I want to end by saying I am incredibly grateful that I did not have cancer this year, and to all the people who do, I truly feel for you. I can't even imagine how terrifying it is. Cancer is already devastating, and the pandemic only amplifies your concerns about your health.

And to everyone who's missing out on time (in-person) with their friends and families, I'm right there with you. But try not to dwell on it. There are still plenty of ways to celebrate safely without forgoing everything completely, you just gotta be creative. And if all goes well, we'll be back together in 2021. :)

Happy holidays, everyone!

Day 3113 - Isolation

For the last few days, I've been joking about everyone complaining about needing to quarantine, and I'm like, amateurs! I had to stay in my germ-free bubble for 6 months when I was on chemo! You're going stir-crazy after three days? CRY ME A RIVER!

But then today, even I started feeling really antsy and anxious, and I had the same reaction to myself: Why are you freaking out already? You've handled so much worse than this, how is THIS making you go stir-crazy?

The huge difference between now and eight years ago is what's going outside of the quarantine bubble - the insane, apocalyptic pandemic. I know that's stupidly obvious, but it made me realize that it's not necessarily the isolation that's upsetting us; it's the whole situation. The fear. There's so much uncertainty, so many unknowns, and so much sickness and sadness.

Again, no shit, Allison. Why tf are you even blogging again?

Because as someone who has truly experienced extreme social distancing, I know that there is a way to do this without losing your mind. We need to focus on what matters, and right now, that is our health and the health of others around us, both physical and mental.

While I realize that's easier said that done, hear me out. When I was sick, I spent my isolated months doing puzzles, playing the piano, watching TV, latch-hooking, playing The Sims 3, doing Pilates with YouTube videos, going on long walks around my neighborhood, and most importantly, keeping in touch with all of my friends and family since I was too immunocompromised to be around them. Of course I had times when I was bored, but overall, I really was okay.

So here we are, in the midst of a global crisis, being told to stay at home and interact with as few people as possible. And people are going nuts. But what if we, just, you know, stopped obsessing with what's happening outside of our bubbles for a minute? Like really, why am I constantly checking the map with updated numbers of COVID-19 cases and death counts? How is this benefiting me? I saw some people temporarily deactivate their Facebook accounts. I think that's a GREAT move, one I might make soon. What good comes of scrolling through all of the doom and gloom? In reality, we're at the point in this crisis that what's going on out there is not going to affect what we're currently being told to do: STAY HOME.

That's one way my experience eight years ago was somewhat similar to now; there was no point in worrying about cancer or my treatment or the possibility of dying, because no matter what happened, my doctors were still gonna tell me I couldn't go out.

So next time you feel yourself panicking, stop. Turn off the news. Stop scrolling. Call a friend or family member. Read a book. Bake some cookies. You're not going stir-crazy, you're just scared. And that's okay. But don't dwell on it. Be smart and stay in. But don't panic. We'll be okay. Trust me, I didn't survive cancer just to be taken down by a respiratory virus. Hang in there, we got this! =)

- Allison

P.S. Want something to read? Spend your quarantine reading about MY quarantine! Want something to cheer you up? Here's my playlist of happy and uplifting songs I listen to when I'm sad. In the meantime, I'll be watching all 21 seasons of Law & Order: SVU.

Day 2557 - Aftermath Adventures

It's getting to the point where I've been in remission long enough that I'm forgetting how many years it's been without thinking about it for a minute. And that's amazing!

Although, of course it's not as simple as just being in remission. I'm never truly "done" with the cancer portion of my life; I still require regular checkups to make sure I'm not having any long-term effects from my treatment.

So let's talk about those! First stop, my ovaries:

If you've ever seen me in the presence of a baby, you know that I start squealing, "LOOK AT THE BABY!" and giggling and making noises that only dogs can hear. I've even had a friend take a video of me watching baby videos. I like babies.

So the idea of potentially not being able to ever have one of my own was kind of scary. My oncologist wasn't particularly worried, but she still recommended I get evaluated just to make sure that if anything was wrong, I froze my eggs before I got too old.

I made an appointment at the Strong Fertility Center, and after some confusion with the receptionist, I explained to her that I'm not TRYING to get pregnant, I just need to know if it's even possible. At my first appointment, I gave my doctor, Dr. Bhagavath, my list of chemotherapy drugs and went over my health history. He asked me if my period ever naturally stopped during my treatment, and when I told him no, he was like, "Oh, well that's great. I don't think anything's wrong."

They did a bunch of blood tests for different hormones, as well as an ultrasound where they can literally count the number of follicles on your ovaries, which blew my mind. A few days later, I went for my followup to go over the test results, and the doctor said, "Your results aren't just normal, they're fantastic!"

It kind of cracked me up how excited Dr. Bhagavath was, but he said the average age of his patients is 38, meaning he's not often delivering good news. For someone my age, it's normal to have about 8-12 follicles in total. They counted 15 in one ovary.

So that was extremely relieving news to receive. He actually said the words, "You look like you've never had chemo," which says a lot given how much I got. And as I told my fiancé, "WE CAN HAVE SO MANY BABIES!"

Oh right...did I mention I have a fiancé? I'm getting married in 6 weeks to Derek, the most wonderful man in the world. =) It's crazy to think about how when I was diagnosed back in 2011, I assumed that I wouldn't live long enough to ever get married, and now here we are, preparing for a wedding! I'm already planning on sending my doctors from the leukemia team a long thank-you note with a wedding picture so I can show them the part of my life they were able to give back to me.

Alright, onto the next issue: chemotherapy-related cognitive dysfunction, or as it is more commonly known, "chemo-brain." Ever since going back to school in 2012, I felt a little "off." I had very close to a photographic memory before my treatment, where I could easily remember dates, addresses, phone numbers, and even credit card numbers after looking at them once or twice. But when I got back to school, I was forgetting names, fishing for words, and I was studying twice as hard to come up with the same, if not worse, results.

I expressed this to my doctors, and they were mostly dismissive of it. They said they don't normally see any cognitive effects from chemotherapy, and I wanted to be like, you literally injected chemo into my spinal fluid like six times, are you seriously telling me that didn't affect my BRAIN at all? Also, ALL OF YOUR PATIENTS ARE FIVE YEARS OLD. Correct, they don't normally see it because they don't normally have kindergarteners coming in and complaining that they can't remember their social security number (real thing that happened to me).

Fast forward a few years, and now I'm working on my M.S. in molecular biology. I take one class at a time, and I often need to watch lectures 2-3 times before I really feel like I understand the information. And when I have to read a lot of dense material, I usually have to have coffee, and if that doesn't work, sometimes Derek will find me crying over my papers because I've been reading the same paragraph for two hours.

Now, you might be reading this and thinking, "Hmm, this sounds kind of like AD/HD." I thought so too.

A few months ago, I saw a neuro-oncologist here at the Wilmot Cancer Center, and after taking some medical and anecdotal history, he said, without hesitation, that I have cognitive dysfunction related to chemotherapy.

Well, great. Tell me something I don't know.

Good news: I feel very validated now that a medical professional has recognized that something is wrong with me. And hopefully this being documented will be a small step towards actively monitoring these kinds of potential deficits in patients. More good news is that I'm still very high-functioning; a lot of people, especially older patients, can have pretty severe and debilitating side effects.

Bad news: They can't really do anything for me. He said a neuropsychological evaluation won't show any deficits because it's not meant to detect subtle changes like mine. He said, "You'll go in, you'll do really well on the tests, and they'll tell you that nothing's wrong." And I guess in the grand scheme of things, that's true; I'm not complaining that I'm stupid and braindead. But even in this situation, I felt a twinge of being dismissed because my problems weren't nearly as bad as what they've seen. And I get that! I'm very grateful that I'm living a happy, normal life. But that doesn't mean that things haven't changed and become more difficult for me.

Since I mentioned that coffee helps me focus, he thought that a prescription of Ritalin might help me in the same way, and I could take it as-needed. I won't really need that until I'm in classes again, so I'll see how it works come January.

When I went to my first appointment at the long-term followup clinic, they gave me a list of all the drugs I was on, the potential long-term effects, and the recommended screening processes for each issue. Now, I always find this list pretty amusing because according to the doctors, it's organized from most likely side effect to least likely. Here is that list:

I laughed in the nurse practitioner's face when she handed that to me, and I said, "How the hell is 'distress' not the top of that list?"

I was talking to Derek about this a few weeks ago - how so many doctors approach medicine from a strictly physical perspective and don't consider the emotional or mental components of a person's health. Because of this, you end up with bullshit lists like this one that put mental health disorders on the bottom as an afterthought. I've had a million echocardiograms to check my heart. I've gotten multiple surveys from MSKCC asking about my eating and exercise habits. I had a fertility specialist tell me I would have no problem getting pregnant at 35. But I also spent 36 hours in an inpatient psychiatric unit after threatening to kill myself. Why was no one monitoring for that?

This leads me to a bunch of important points:

There REALLY needs to be more focus on the mental and emotional impact of cancer in adolescent and young adult patients. I am so grateful that my doctors had the knowledge and understanding of my disease to cure me and give me a second chance at life, but I'm SURE I am not the only survivor who's ever had debilitating depression or PTSD. It took me like two years to be able to get a haircut without crying afterwards. But don't worry, my bone density scan came back completely normal!

Speaking of adolescents and young adults, this is the only group of cancer patients that hasn't seen drastic improvement in survival outcomes over the past few decades. It's a relatively small population, but there are still millions of us who have been affected by cancer and don't necessarily have the the proper resources and support to deal with our kinds of losses, like being out of school, the feeling of isolation from friends and family, or even simply the trauma of having to face the concept of your own mortality at such a young age. This is why I support organizations like the Dear Jack Foundation; it focuses on this specific population and getting patients the support they need.

It's been seven years since my diagnosis, and while it's getting easier and easier for me to deal with post-cancer issues, I really never will be completely done. That being said, let this serve as a reminder to everyone who's supported me over the last seven years that every 9 minutes, someone dies of blood cancer. Not everyone is as lucky as I was, which is why we need to keep doing our part in eradicating this disease. Click here if you want to donate to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society!

As always, thank you to everyone who's been following my journey since 2011 and continuing to support me, my family, and my cause. Here's to a happy, healthy future for everyone. <3

Day 1995 - How to Have a Five-Year Remission Party

This post is longggggg overdue, but with my 3 1/2 jobs and graduate class, I got kind of busy and forgot to blog. But this is too important to ignore!

It is official. As of November 23, 2016, I have been in remission from acute myeloid leukemia for five years, a milestone that so many people with the disease never even come close to reaching.

I remember waking up from my bone marrow biopsy on that Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2011 to Dr. Roth telling me that they didn't find any traces of cancer and that they would proceed with treatment as planned. I must've been too drugged and too focused on the fact that I had to be on a chemo backpack for Thanksgiving to fully process what that meant. And I didn't realize until months later that you are considered "in remission" as soon as they stop finding cancer cells, whether that's during or after treatment.

I could spend the majority of this post reflecting on my journey and emphasizing how grateful I am to be alive, but I'm sure you all know that already. Let's talk about the fun stuff - my remission party.

Unfortunately, if you Google, "5-year remission party," you get pretty much no results. So hopefully this blog post will inspire other cancer survivors to celebrate in the ridiculous way that I did.

The overall theme of the party was "High Microbial." As anyone who followed my story knows, I was neutropenic for months at a time, requiring me to be on a low-microbial diet. This meant I couldn't eat foods like yogurt, fresh fruit or salad, sushi, fast food, and similar things that were not particularly "clean" foods. Since I was 106 pounds and jaundiced five years ago, alcohol was added to that list as well. Derek and I made red sangria and a rum and pineapple punch to represent blood and platelets. Finally, the last sentence of the event invite said, "Guests will be required to bring a recent CBC or submit to one at the door to make sure they can handle the amount of microbes at this party." I don't mess around.

Ben committed and literally brought his CBC.

Blood and platelet punch.

High-microbial food!

I was unsurprised to learn that there weren't any good five-year remission party game suggestions on the internet, so I had to make my own. The first one, which made a ton of people uncomfortable, was "Pin the Triple-Lumen on the Cancer Patient." I printed out a bald cartoon girl and about 25 pictures of a triple-lumen, and people were spun around and had to pin it on her chest. 

Later in the evening, everyone partook in the smashing of the cancer piñata. We LITERALLY BEAT CANCER. I wanted a big white circle piñata to represent a white blood cell, but since Party City doesn't have a cancer section, I had to settle with an iridescent white star that I labeled "CANCER." As the guests left, I gave them orange (leukemia ribbon color) goodie bags filled with tattoos, whistles, bouncy balls, and bubbles.

Honestly, probably the best thing about the night was that despite the absurdity of these activities, everyone was really into it and had a great time. Like, no one had ever been to a party where you've been encouraged to tape a printout of a medical device on bald cartoon girl or consume copious amounts of chicken fries from Burger King, so it was new and exciting for everyone! Had this party been thrown by anyone else, everyone probably would've been too uncomfortable, but you know me...I live for pole-vaulting over the line. =)

I did it! I survived! Five years ago, I didn't think I would make it to 20, and now here I am at 25, living like a healthy, normal(ish) person (normal people don't make cancer piñatas, I know). And in all seriousness, I am so incredibly grateful to my friends, my family, God, and most importantly, my doctors and treatment team, who did everything in their power to keep me alive, comfortable, informed, and well-taken-care-of since the day I was diagnosed. I'm not one for overstatements, but I would literally be dead without them, and I will never forget that.

So that's it, Internet. That's how you throw a five-year remission party. If you or someone you know is looking for party ideas, please feel free to direct them to this blog post.

P.S. I know I usually go for months without blogging, but I'm getting my fertility testing done next week, so I'll probably write about that soon!

Day 1827 - Still Fighting the Good Fight

I feel like I start every cancerversary blog post with, "Wow, I can't believe it's been [insert number] years!"

Honestly, I'm starting to get so far removed from my diagnosis and treatment, I sometimes forget why I blog and raise money for the LLS and all the jazz. I mean, I'm not completely removed; I'm still hypersensitive to certain jokes or ideas (seriously, don't make jokes about me dying or relapsing. Can't believe that even needs to be said). But at the 4th annual benefit concert we had last weekend, I neglected to even mention that I'm a leukemia survivor.

A couple of my friends are always uncomfortable/confused when I tell them it's my cancerversary because they're like, "Uh...do we...celebrate that...?" I guess I don't think of September 9th as a celebration, but more as a reflection on where I am now versus where I was in 2011. Things aren't perfect, but overall, I'm doing really well! I like my job, I like my band, I'm getting my M.S., I have a wonderful boyfriend, I have lots of great friends, and I'm generally very happy. That's the first time I've been able to say that in a lonnnnnnng time.

The one thing that bothers me now that it's been almost five years since I've finished treatment is the fact that the cause has seem to become less important to everyone around me. To an extent, I can't blame them, since I literally just said that I sometimes forget why I'm doing this. But I'm still doing it. My life has been permanently changed by my experience with cancer, and because of that, I spend a significant amount of time and energy fundraising for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and trying to draw attention to the fact that leukemia is a terrible disease that needs to be eradicated, ESPECIALLY in kids. It gets harder and harder each year to reach my fundraising goal, and I've been lowering it with each year because I can see the trend. And part of me doesn't even want to have to play the cancer card in order to get people to donate because it shouldn't matter.

This is why I think it's good to recognize my cancerversary every year. It's a time to remember what this disease did not only to me, but to the thousands of kids diagnosed with blood cancers every year. Just because I have lots of hair and lots of white blood cells doesn't mean that blood cancer isn't an issue anymore. Sometimes I feel like people who followed my story don't realize this fact: Not every child who gets AML survives. And that freaking sucks. And that's why we need to improve treatments!

Sorry this has kind of been a rambling, preachy post. (I'm actually sick, so I'm not really 100% focused haha.) Let's wrap this up.

All in all, I'm proud of what I've accomplished over the last five years, and I'm extremely grateful for the extra time I've been given on Earth thanks to my doctors and all of the scientists who contributed to developing the drugs that cured me. I'm also thankful to all the fabulous people who have come in and out of my life since my diagnosis and have helped me get through everything life has continued to throw at me. I'm glad a lot of the emotional trauma is dissipating and turning into more of a drive to keep fighting blood cancer in any way I can. That being said, don't let my successful fight lead you to falsely believe that the whole problem is solved, which I think is a good attitude to take towards anything. Don't get complacent. Keep fighting. Keep improving. Keep moving forward.

And donate if you can. =)
http://pages.lightthenight.org/wcny/Rochestr16/AEberhardt

Happy 5th cancerversary to me!

Day 1695 - What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Weaker

I've been meaning to blog for a really long time, but I just haven't felt up to it.

Life is difficult.

I had started writing a post about my trip to the Long Term Survivorship clinic at Sloan Kettering at the beginning of March. It was really long and unnecessarily detailed. Here's the gist:

• I'm an adult, so I have to see adult doctors now. I like my new doctor a lot.
• They gave me a list of potential long-term side effects of my treatment, most of which were not big concerns:
• Cardiotoxicity: I have to get an echocardiogram every 5 years.
• Cognitive deficits: She wasn't dismissive of this; I can get evaluated by Behavioral Health and see if they find anything wrong. If they do, I could potentially be given special accommodations in graduate school.
• Fertility: I met with the fertility specialist, and she recommended that I see a reproductive endocrinologist just to check things out. They might say everything's fine, they might say, "Hey, you should freeze some eggs." Then I'd have to get some hormone injections and a few ultrasounds, and I'd be good to go.
• They have free adventure-like trips for cancer survivors! I could go whitewater rafting or rock climbing because I survived cancer. Hell yeah.

My dad died a week and a half later.

I guess I don't really want to go into excruciating detail about this either. My dad had been pretty sickly for the last few years or so. He was always in and out of the hospital, and we never thought much of it. Then on a Monday afternoon while I was at work, his doctor called me and told me he was being moved to the ICU and I should probably come home ASAP. I left work, packed a bag, and headed to the Rochester airport. By the time I made it to Englewood Hospital at 11 PM that night, he was swollen, confused, and in so much pain. Luckily, he was conscious enough to know that my brother and I were there, and he continued to be his normal pain-in-the-ass self, taking off his oxygen mask because he was "suffocating," making us move his bed up and down, and yelling at us to move his legs so he could get more comfortable. After a long discussion with his doctors, we all decided that the DNR should be signed and he should be given pain medication. As we were leaving, we said, "See you tomorrow," and he said the only coherent thing he said all night: "I'm not gonna be here tomorrow."

We got a phone call early the next morning saying that his heart rate was dropping and we should come in as soon as we could. He was slightly conscious when we got there; he'd give a smirk or a blink when we talked to him. All of the levels on the monitors were slowly dropping over the course of the next few hours, he eventually stopped breathing, and like you see in every hospital scene on TV, we all were standing around watching his heart monitor stop. And he was gone.

Eh I guess that was still a lot of detail. That whole week was completely exhausting; lots of running errands for the wake and funeral, getting pictures together, and seeing a ton of friends and family. My brother and I thought it was would be a nice tribute to perform at the funeral, so Robert played the guitar and I sang one of my dad's favorite songs, "Melissa" by the Allman Brothers. Someone posted it on YouTube if you want to watch it.

So like, I know that none of this story is cancer-related. But I'm kind of at a point where I'm sick of shit like this happening, and this obviously can just be piled onto the whole cancer thing. When I came back to work the following Monday, a coworker said to me, "You never catch a break, do you?"

Most of the time, I laugh and shrug at comments like that, but today, I'm feeling it pretty hard. I do feel like I never catch a break. So many people tell me that I'm gonna come out stronger because of everything I've been through, but I don't think that's the case. In fact, it's the opposite. The more I have to deal with, the harder and more exhausting it gets. I don't "bounce back" the way I used to. Sure, some aspects of these experiences have changed me for the better - I'm a more understanding and empathetic person now, with insight into a whole lot of crap. But overall, when it comes to my ability to handle stress, sadness, and downright shitty things, it's getting worse and worse. And I'm pretty resentful of that.

What makes my dad's death so much harder than all the other things I've gone through is that time seems to be making it worse. The longer I go without being able to talk to him, the more of a reminder it is that he isn't there anymore. There are so many silly things that I'd love to share with him and then witness his typical "proud dad" reaction, and I get filled up pretty much every time I think about not being able to do that anymore.

As usual, I'm being a Negative Nancy, but I hope the readers of this blog (are any of you left?) will understand. I'm feeling pretty beaten down right now, and similar to my bone marrow after six rounds of induction chemo, I think it's gonna take me a little longer than usual to get back up from this. I guess I may be getting a little weaker each time, but hey, that doesn't mean I've given up.

In funnier/more ridiculous news, I recently went to the orthopedist about a pain in my foot, and I was diagnosed with the beginnings of osteoarthritis in the joint of my big toe. So as if having AML at 19 wasn't already enough of a sign that I'm actually 70 years old, why don't we throw some joint degeneration on top of it? I also get to wear a boot for 3 weeks. It's awesome.

Alright, that's all for the bad news and negativity. Let's end on a positive note. I got into grad school! I'll be doing an online M.S. in Molecular Biology at Lehigh University come the fall! I'll keep working full-time, I'll take classes part-time, and the U of R will pay for 70% of the tuition. I will master all of the science!

My brother and I were talking about telling that news to my dad. As Robert so accurately put it, "He would've exploded. He might not have known what Lehigh is, but he would've been a proud dad."

Rest in peace, Daddy. I'll always be your Sweet Pea.