Being told I had leukemia was a shock and I don't mind admitting I burst into tears in the Consultants Office.
For me and my family, the most important thing was to get the treatment needed to fight this cancer of the blood. I hadn't been well for about eighteen months before the diagnosis, I felt very tired and unfit.
During a lovely holiday in Bermuda, I started to feel as though I had got the flu coming on and I had to go to see my doctor when I arrived home in England because by this time I couldn't breath very well. I had actually got legionnaires disease - which to put it simply meant that I had pneumonia, the TB I had as a child showed up on my X rays, and I was very ill for 6 weeks. I was taking 8 different antibiotics daily to fight this off.
Interestingly, my husband was fine - no symptoms at all - I realise now that my white blood cells were already being attached by the cancer and this in turn brought my immune system down.
It was over a year after getting legionnaires that I knew something was wrong because I found I needed to go to bed in the afternoon due to fatigue - I had only to knock myself lightly and I would have a big black bruise.
After visiting my doctor again, who referred me to the local hospital, where tests were done which included blood tests and a sample of my bone marrow was extracted from my hip bone - not a ery pleasant experience I have to say,the diagnosis came in that I had hairy cell leukemia, it's called that because the tumors look like they are covered in tiny hairs under the microscope.
The chemotherapy was simple - basically the chemicals needed to kill off the cancer cells are fed into you intravenously - I firstly had a liquid injected prior to the chemo, this was to stop me from being sick - thank goodness it worked. I was also lucky that my hair did not come out in clumps - I had severe dandruff but that was all.
I had to have 5 two hour chemo sessions Monday to Friday and I felt very weak by the last session, I was given some needles to inject myself with, these contained a solution described by the doctor as Fertiliser for White Cells. I did the injections and found I was getting rather a lot of discomfort in the hip and thigh bones - this was caused by the injections as the solution was stimulating my bone marrow and aiding the clean new white cells to grow (sorry I cannot explain it in more medical terminology) and that was what caused the discomfort. It was a small price to pay to get my blood clean again.
I have been very lucky, my sort of leukemia is treatable and as long as infections are avoided after and during the chemo, a full recovery after 6 months is perfectly achievable.
I have been in remission now for three years, visit my consultant every six months and he says my blood is very healthy, so I thank god for that and of course the medical profession who are just fantastic.
I am now officially retired as I am aged 62 years but I have just bought a franchise selling web sites, please feel free to look http://www.web2riches.co.uk
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