After my whole cancer thing, I finally saw a doctor about a pesky chronic back ache I’ve always had. I had a few x-rays and the doctor said something about having some fused something going on in my back (yea, I need someone to pay better attention to detail for me when I’m talking to doctors I guess). The doctor seemed to be pretty ok with giving me a script for pain and watching and I was ok with it too since it really was only a pesky problem that was completely manageable…

… about two weeks ago the pain in my back started to get progressively worse until I took as much as I could and visited the health plan to see what was up. They took some more x-rays and given my history, decided to schedule a MRI too. I was fairly satisfied with my health care but my back is still in some serious pain even with the additional pain meds they gave me. Finally one night I found myself in a position while doing the laundry that I couldn’t get out of. The pain was paralyzing. I made my way to my bed and hoped for the best with my pain meds. I spent the next two days in bed in hopes that all I needed was rest but it didn’t get better, only worse. Naturally I began to have leukemia worries and apparently so did every one else. I called Molly and set up a blood test for after my MRI. The day of the MRI had me in tears from the pain and I called my mom to help bring me. I didn’t want to worry her with it but of course it did. And then it spread to my sister, possibly sisters and before I knew it there was a tree of people waiting to hear the results.

My CBC came back the next morning completely normal and the MRI came back that afternoon saying little more than we already knew except there didn’t appear to be any tumors in case someone in the tree was worried about that. As the news spreads that I’m ok, in pain but still leukemia free, everyone speaks about how relieved they were. This implies they were worried. This conflicts me. I mean anyone who knows me knows that I enjoy attention, I do. But I don’t want people worried about me. I guess that means they have a pretty good reason to be worried too. I guess it means that here it is, almost three years later, and I still cant grasp what a big deal this whole leukemia thing is. I could die… It’s flippin scary. Other people are worried I’m going to die… That’s flippin scarier.