Fighting To Win

I’ve been asked this question or a variation of it a few times….and so I thought that I’d answer it here, as I’m sure that someone else has wondered about this too.

Angelica’s immune system is currently suppressed. Normally, (like for you or I) we have a certain number of blood cells in our body that have specific jobs. Think of the different blood cells as soldiers. Some help to fight off viruses and bacteria, some remember which bacteria and viruses you have come up against in the past and what the best strategy was to defeat them…..and there are a bunch more.

You and I have tons of big strong healthy good soldiers and new, strong healthy soldiers are always joining and learning from the older, wiser, more mature soldiers. Normally when something bad tries to get inside of you, the good guys identify it as a bad guy and then they work to destroy it and they win and all is well inside the world that is you. But sometimes, a zombie gets in with the healthy guys and these zombies….they are sneaky. They can manage to sneak past all the fighter soldiers and then when you’re not looking…..BAM….they bite you, and now your one zombie is now two zombies and then they multiply rapidly from there….

This is what happened with Geli and by the time they diagnosed her, her bone marrow was filled with 85-90% cancer cells. The cancer cells (zombies) had destroyed most of her good cells. Without treatment, the prognosis is death….it progresses quite rapidly once the concentration reaches that stage.

BUT…..right now, they have killed all the cancer zombies that they could find and at the last Bone Marrow Biopsy, Angelica’s bone marrow had about 25% good healthy cells. Not bad considering that they basically dropped an Atomic Bomb (of Chemotherapy) on her and nuked everything good and bad.

This is the extremely condensed and much simplified version.

So because she is continually on Chemotherapy (and will be on the Intense Side of Chemo treatment for the next 27 weeks or so and then she’ll be on Maintenance which is a lower dose treatment until October 2012) she doesn’t have a lot of soldiers. Some times she has more and some times she has less, but to put it into perspective…..Angelica is allowed to go to school when she has a minimum of 500 soldiers. The low end of normal is 4600 soldiers and the high end of normal is 10,800.

As you can see there is quite a difference between having 500 soldiers or having 5,000 soldiers….now add into that that lots of the time, the “soldiers” that are working for Geli are young, immature or weak soldiers and it just all gets messy doesn’t it?

This is why we are trying to be careful with her and who she comes into contact with.

It basically comes down to calculated risks.

It’s important to us that she be allowed to do “typical” things that will help her spirits to feel positive and uplifted. Depression is a horrible thing that no one wants to have to deal with. To have to fight through depression on top of fighting off cancer….really, really REALLY SUPER NOT COOL! And so, we let her go to school. We encourage her to connect with her friends. We let her try to be a “normal” teenager doing “normal” teenage things when the reality can be so far from normal. We pray that she doesn’t get sick. We tell her to avoid sick people as much as she can. We give her “Purell” to wash her hands lots and we tell her to take any and all precautions that she can and that she remembers to……while trying to be as normal as possible…..while bald….and tired……and out of breath……and add on top of that that she’s not “really” attending school. Some days, it’s just one class and even when she goes, she’s basically allowed to audit the classes and she can receive material from the teachers, but every things has to be handed in to her “homebound teacher” who she meets with one a week (hopefully) at home! It’s not normal, but if she can go to school, be with her friends and forget about not feeling well, or being tired, or having to go into the hospital….if she can forget about the chemo and the cancer, and how hard it is sometimes…..even for just a moment, then it makes it all worth it. All the stress and worry and concern that we might feel about “exposing” her to “all the crap out there” is nothing compared her forgetting about it all and “just being normal.”

Most of the rest of the time, we avoid crowds and crowded areas. Everyone in our family does, as much as possible. We spend most of our time, at home or outside away from people. To do things like shopping or even going out for a meal, we attempt to go at “down” times. For example, I try to shop early in the morning so that the stores have relatively few people and even at that….if someone is coming towards me down an aisle and they are coughing and hacking and look like death warmed over – I will actually leave that aisle and come back to it later. It’s not worth it for me to risk that I or Judah or Siah might get sick and bring it home to Geli.

It’s not always easy or the most convenient, but aside from school, we are doing what we can to avoid illness over here.

For whatever reason, her counts this round have been pretty good and she’s stayed up over the 500 mark, so far. This is amazing and we are so thankful for it. The next round is a mini repeat of the very first round that she went through and that one decimated her “soldiers” down so low that they could no longer count them….below 50 they can’t count them and it’s basically considered at that point that she has pretty much “no” protection.

So, we continue to pray that she remains healthy and we carry on.

So, in answer to some of the questions out there, no, we are not participating in “normal” activities aside from Geli being allowed to go to school sometimes. Xandra and Jeremy do go to school and their classes have been talked to about being extra super careful with colds and coughs. Sometimes, rarely, the older two kids have gone to church, but we’re not taking Geli or the youngest boys….and even with all of our being careful, Josiah has managed to pick up two colds over the past 2 months. There are no Mom’s Groups or preschool or library events, no public pool swimming, no fun play places, and no group activities.

We have done two family events but polled the family to see if anyone was sick and fortunately…..everyone was healthy or else we would not have been able to go.

This is a season…not a fun season and sometimes it’s a lonely season. It’s most definitely a tired and emotional season, but it’s a season, none the less and…….SEASONS CHANGE!

Yes, this is a pretty long season, but in the grand scheme of life, it’s one year (or 2.5 years in total) out of 100! (That’s a post for another day, but I plan to live to 100 years old, at least!) It is staring us in the face right now, and sometimes it even feels like we’re being screamed at, but one day we’ll look back and this will just be a blip on the radar of our lives.

Until then, we make the very best decisions that we can. We hold onto hope. We look for joy. We pray for health and strength and peace. We live. This is the year that we fight, with everything in us, for life, for Angelica’s life…

…and WE WILL WIN!