One

I am one year old. Well, my immune system is, anyway. It is weird to even write that, because I remember the day too vividly for it to be one year ago. I remember sitting in the hospital, sick and exhausted from vomiting non-stop for 48 hours straight (thanks to chemo, radiation and multiple drug cocktails), watching as they hooked up a huge bag of bone marrow to my central line. A bag of marrow from some mysterious heart-of-gold stranger. My husband and I watched in silence as the blood slowly, slowly made it’s way down the line into my body. I prayed that this blood would get along with my body, that my donor and I would live in harmony, that I wouldn't be permanently disabled from side effects. My musings were disjointed and unequal in gravity. I wondered if I would get new allergies. I wondered if it would be my last week on earth. I wondered if my celiac would go away and I could eat bread again. I wondered what exactly would happen to me if the new immune system didn't graft. Would I die right away? Would it take a few days, a few weeks? I realized that I had not said a proper goodbye to my children. Of course I hadn't.. Because I expected to live. All of these things went through my mind as the IV drip, drip, dripped into my veins.

One year later, I am healthier than I ever expected to be. While I still have challenges and take medications, I am able to be a full-time mother to my children. I do the things that I love. I was enormously blessed not to have suffered from any significant graft-versus-host disease. I know that many others are not so fortunate. I attribute it to prayer, a combination of conventional and naturopathic medicine, a perfectly matching donor, and my pre-cancer good health. But really, you just never know what outcome you’re going to get. So far, mine is good.

As I sit here writing this, I am eating banana bread, and not the gluten free kind. Indeed, my doctors were right. The transplant wiped out my celiac disease. (Celiac is an autoimmune disease, so when you replace the immune system, you wipe it out. Doctors are actually doing clinical trials using BMTs for all sorts of autoimmune diseases, but because the risk of mortality is so high, obviously the condition has to be pretty severe to warrant it.) But all that aside, I can eat bread. All it took was being decimated by the most toxic chemo-radiation one-two punch the human body can stand. Real bread. Heavenly. (And yes, I know it is somewhat ironic that just as everyone is going gluten-free I am going pro-gluten, but whatever. It doesn’t make me sick and it is delicious.) It is certainly not something I would recommend as a celiac cure, but at least I won something out of this whole nightmarish experience. Sandwiches.

So two days ago, we partied. I invited all the people who had supported and cheered for me over the last year (well, not all – there were people all over the world and they couldn't all be there!) and we gathered in a beautiful park and ate and laughed and chased small children around. It was a good day to be alive. It’s hard to imagine that I almost didn't live to see it.

I still don’t know what’s coming next. I am still terrified of a relapse. I regularly look at pictures of myself and inadvertently think, “Oh, that’s a good picture for my kids to remember me by.” I keep journals for both of my children of things that I want to tell them when they’re older, or things that they've done that only I will remember, just in case I don’t get that chance. I make every big decision with this thought: “If I’m in the hospital a year from now, will I regret this choice?”

While physically I feel fairly fit and energetic (until 7pm, that is, when I crash hard), mentally I struggle with concentration and focus. I feel permanently scatter-brained. (My husband tells me I was always a scatter-brain, I am only just noticing it now because I was too busy before. He may have a point.) I am hoping that will fade with time, otherwise an academic life is never going to be in my future. But maybe that's OK.

And even though I wish this whole screwed up year had never happened, this experience has opened me up to the tragic and courageous world of people scarred by cancer. I don’t say “touched” by cancer because cancer doesn't do that. Touch implies some element of gentleness. A disease that takes down three week old babies does not touch. It maims, it attacks, it scars. Cancer is not a gift. It is a serial killer.

Throughout this experience, I have had the honour of meeting amazing people who fight back. I have met courageous little boys and tenacious mothers, brave fathers and gritty siblings. They rally and cry and hug and endure. They laugh at things that really aren't funny. But sometimes there is nothing else to be done. They know how precious life is, and they fight for it. And I will stand alongside them.

Because this fight isn't ending any time soon.

Back of the Pack

With teammate Lisa Steele, at my first 5k post-cancer race

As many of you know, I recently re-entered the competitive (amateur) running scene, and with that came a return to my faithful coach, Ken Parker, and my beloved women’s running team, the Ottawa Athletic Club Racing Team (OACRT). Over the last year of recovery, I imagined returning to this team, which has boasted many of the fastest women in Ottawa. When I first started running with them, in 2009, I was almost always at the very back of the pack. I was often the last one to finish a race or workout, and I trained hard to edge my way up until by 2010, I was running mid-pack and broke 20 minutes in the 5k. 

But now, with all the setbacks that cancer brings, I find myself at the back of the pack once again. I’m not going to lie, this brings with it all sorts of difficult and conflicting emotions. On the first workout back, I was not even sure I would be able to keep up on the warm-up (I could). I told my coach that I would likely be a full minute behind everyone else on the mile repeats (I wasn’t). But I was still at the back of the pack. I was with the pack, mind you, but at the back. Again.

With my daughter
(and the cursed hat that cost me a sub-22 race)

When I came home from that workout and sighed to my husband that I was last again, he laughed. “Oh, you’re less than a year from your transplant and you’re at the back of a pack of the fastest women in Ottawa? Poor you.”

If you want sympathy, don’t cry to my husband.

It’s all about perspective. Sure, I was a little bummed to be at the back again, but I was also elated that I could keep up at all. When I ran my first 5k after cancer, in May, I was aiming to be under 25 minutes (seeing as I had not run one single kilometre in under five minutes since returning to running, that seemed like a reasonable if not optimistic goal). I shocked myself (and my family) by running 22:03. In fact, my husband missed my finish because he got to the line at 24:00 and thought something horrible must have happened to me when I didn’t show up by 30:00. Meanwhile, I was wandering around our meeting place wondering where on earth he was.

Yesterday, with a month of chasing the OAC ladies under my belt, I ran the Emilie’s Run 5k in 21:32. I was not remotely fast enough to win anything, obviously, and it was not anywhere near a personal best, but I was fifth in my age group, which to me was a shock (again). I am beginning to wonder if this is all because of my great hemoglobin levels, which, pre-cancer, were never all that good. I guess it's yet another thing I'll have to thank my donor for. (You know, that and my life. That's all.)

Some of you may have seen this article about me, so you know a lot of this story already. I find the entire thing quite hilarious, as I have never been a top athlete and could never have predicted that one day I would be on the front page of the sports section. On race day, random strangers who had seen the paper were wishing me good luck, and today on my trail run another stranger said: “Hey, are you that girl from the paper?”

En route to 21:32, a new PCPB
(post-cancer personal best)

As I count down the days to my one year bone marrow transplant anniversary (or, as I like to call it, my [re]birthday), all of these mini-victories are amazing gifts that I will never take for granted. Every day that I can run is a celebration. Yes, I am at the back of the pack. And yes, I may reach a plateau where side effects and decreased lung capacity dictate that my body simply cannot go any faster. We’ll see. But it really doesn’t matter. I’m not trying to win anything. I’m just enjoying being alive.

Although I'm pretty sure that at the race yesterday, I won the leukemia survivor category. That's a thing, right?