Finally Back On Track | My White Blood Cells Took Unscheduled PTO

Aug 13
6 min read

Treatment number 10 is done… Only 6 weeks to go!

I would be saying five, but unfortunately, treatment last week had other plans for me.

Max and I both got hit with the stomach flu, because apparently going through chemotherapy wasn’t enough excitement for one household. On top of that, my white blood cell count dropped to 1.0 and my potassium was nearly critically low. Oof!

So very reluctantly, I agreed to defer treatment for a week. I knew it was the right decision. My body clearly needed the break.

What surprised me was how emotional and honestly, a little neurotic I became about missing that one treatment. I’m almost embarrassed thinking back on it… naturally I am usually a positive, glass-half-full type of person. But this situation really hit me hard and I was feeling very sorry for myself. Don’t worry, I snapped out of it quickly! 😆

My chemotherapy end date moved from 9/16 to 9/23.

One whole week.

To most people, that probably sounds like nothing. What’s one more week after everything I’ve already done?

But when you are living your life treatment to treatment, adding even one extra second to the finish line feels enormous. I had September 16th burned into my brain. That was THE DAY. So watching it move was harder on me than I expected. I couldn’t believe myself when I spent an entire day last week in tears that felt impossible to stop. I rarely actually cry, so it took me by surprise.

I even found myself crying over a bag of hair ties because apparently that was my breaking point. 😂 I think I just desperately wanted something, anything, to blame for how emotional and neurotic I was feeling. And somehow, that innocent little bag of hair ties caught the heat for all of it.

We hit a long red light. I hated the red light. I may have emotionally argued with the red light, and cursed at the person in front of me slamming their breaks when the light was yellow. But this week, we got the green light again.

My white blood cell count came back up to 3.6, which is considered normal and safe for treatment. So clearly as much as I hated admitting it, my body really did need that week to recover.

Another bizarre little development: I don’t have fingerprints right now.

My fingertips have become completely smooth from a reaction to Taxol. My grip has gotten significantly worse, and my fingerprints are currently so faint they’re barely readable.

Of all the things I expected cancer treatment to temporarily steal from me, my fingerprints were absolutely not on the bingo card.

It’s rare, weird, and another reminder of how many tiny things our bodies do every day that we never think twice about, until suddenly they don’t.

Cancer has given me an entirely new appreciation for the most random things. Hair. Eyelashes. Fingertips. Energy. Taste buds. Normal blood counts. Being able to open a jar. Every time something new disappears or changes, I realize how much I took it for granted before.

On the hair front, though, I have officially become somewhat of a wig professional.

I’ve learned how to trim my own wigs, texturize them, and actually put them on correctly. Thank you, TikTok University! I still rarely wear one, but when I do, I feel so much more confident knowing most people genuinely cannot tell the difference.

Being bald in public has been one of the stranger emotional parts of all of this.

People stare all the time.

Most of the time I know it isn’t intentional or malicious. I’m a young woman walking around with a completely bald, shiny head. People notice. Even my fancy little head covers don’t really hide what’s happening.

I obviously look sick. I obviously look like I’m actively receiving cancer treatment. And having that announced to the world before I ever say a word can feel incredibly vulnerable. It does cause me to isolate a lot more. I find myself ordering groceries for pickup or delivery more often than ever before, or avoiding going to the mailbox. I don’t want to feel exposed to the world, and that security blanket is gone.

The Cancer Care Center is another experience entirely because I am usually the youngest person in the room by a very, very long shot.

The other patients look at me with this kind of understanding that’s hard to explain. Some have teared up looking my way because they know firsthand how grueling this season is. I think seeing someone young enough to be their granddaughter sitting in an infusion chair hits a tender place in their hearts.

And, to be fair, I get it.

My situation is shocking.

I’ve learned even more about my diagnosis over the last couple of weeks, including just how unusual my specific situation is.

I’m 31. I presented de novo stage IV, meaning this is my first cancer diagnosis, not a recurrence. My metastasis is bone-only and Olgiometastatic, confined to my sternum.

That combination is incredibly rare, which also means there simply isn’t a huge amount of research involving people who look exactly like me on paper. The likelihood of my situation is 0.08%… no that is not a typo and there are no extra zeroes! This can be frustrating when I desperately want someone to hand me a neat little chart with exact percentages and tell me precisely what my future looks like.

But there is also a lot of hope in my particular situation.

My doctors consider my prognosis favorable and are treating me very aggressively, more similarly to a late stage III cancer with the hope of achieving a complete remission despite technically being stage IV.

My metastatic disease is solely in my sternum, very close to the tumors in my left breast. Because everything is concentrated in that area, my local treatment options are much more favorable than they would be if the cancer had traveled to distant bones or organs.

After chemotherapy and surgery, the plan is to fit me for a radiation plate large enough to treat the sternum area along with my left breast/chest area and destroy any cancer cells that may have survived chemotherapy.

I am so hopeful it works. In fact I’m feeling quite confident it will work.

I know my recurrence risk is higher because metastatic disease was present at diagnosis. But because my situation is so uncommon, there isn’t a perfect statistic that tells me exactly what will happen to me. The fear would eat me alive, and I refuse to live that way!

So instead, I focus on what my doctors continue to remind me:

Outside of cancer, I am young, strong, and healthy. I am responding to treatment. And I have a very strict long-term plan for surveillance and hormone suppression to give me the best possible chance moving forward.

I can’t control every statistic. I can control showing up, following the plan, and doing everything in my power to keep moving forward.

And one thing I am especially grateful for through all of this is my sobriety.

I’m heading towards almost seven years sober, and I genuinely believe those years of recovery helped prepare my body for this fight. My liver, kidneys, pancreas, and overall health had years to heal and become stronger before I ever knew I would need them this badly.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this would be waiting for me down the road.

But recovery prepared my body to survive something I never saw coming.

In a very literal way, sobriety may have helped save my life.

Max absolutely LOVES “Mama’s head.”

He drives his little cars across it. He digs through his toy box looking for things that can become “Mama’s hat.” He stacks blocks on my forehead like I am some sort of bald construction site.

And sometimes at night, he’ll pull my beanie off, wrap his little arms around my bare head and say, “Awww, Mama,” while petting it.

It makes me laugh every single time.

Someday my hair will grow back. Someday this treatment schedule won’t run our lives. Someday September 23rd will just be another date on the calendar. I very much look forward to those days, and I know they will be here before I know it.

(I also have my pre-op appointment for surgery September 21, and second phase of treatment will soon be on the calendar after that!)

In conclusion, I will remember those little hands hugging my bald head forever.

I say it often… but cancer has taken a lot from this season of my life. But Max keeps turning the strangest parts of it into memories I never want to lose.