A Quote by Suleika Jaouad
Just a few years ago, at the age of 22, I learned I had an aggressive form of leukemia. I needed intensive chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant to save my life. Back then, my doctors told me that I had a 35 percent chance of surviving my transplant.
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Soon enough I would learn the specific diagnosis: myelodysplastic syndrome, a disorder of the bone marrow. In my case, the disease growing inside me had morphed into acute myeloid leukemia. I would need intensive chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant to save my life.
The thought of going through a bone marrow transplant, which in my case called for a life-threatening dose of chemotherapy followed by a total replacement of my body's bone marrow, was scary enough. But then I learned that finding a donor can be the scariest part of all.
It felt like 10 years, but I was actually in treatment for three-and-a-half years. I finally finished in April. Two years ago, I had a bone marrow transplant from my brother, which saved my life, so I feel really grateful.
There's a photograph of me in the transplant unit where I have a vomit bucket under one arm, I have my laptop on my knees, and I'm crying, not because, you know, I'm about to have a bone marrow transplant, but because I've missed a deadline!
A few years ago he had a big heart transplant in Chicago, a five-hour operation. It took the doctors four hours to get him on the operating table.
Dozens of chemotherapy treatments and one bone marrow transplant later, I wish I could say that I've mastered the art of not working. But there are still days when I wake up feeling simultaneously restless and bored.
Traveling gave me the opportunity to reinvent myself. You can imagine my excitement when, one year after my bone marrow transplant and two years after my cancer diagnosis, my doctors gave me permission to take my first big trip since cancer. Freedom, finally!
This is a year and a few months after the transplant. Before I had it my doctors told me that it would be the biggest thing that I ever had to face and believe me, when they take your liver out of ya and put another one in it's like replacing a football in your stomach.
I had a 23 per cent blockage in my micro-arteries. At first the doctors thought I needed a heart transplant, then they said I have microvascular angina, which means I will be on medication for the rest of my life.
Every year, nearly two-thirds of the approximately 200,000 patients in need of a bone marrow transplant will not find a marrow donor that matches within their families.
Today, my brother and I share almost identical DNA, the result of a successful bone marrow transplant I had last April using his healthy stem cells. But Adam and I couldn't be more different.
I've been fortunate to be treated by excellent doctors at world-class hospitals. In the last year alone, my insurance has covered over a million dollars in medical expenses, including a bone marrow transplant and 10 hospitalizations amounting to a combined five months of inpatient care.
With a Catholic mother and a Muslim father, I've always had a great interest in religion, but I've never practiced one myself. After I received a diagnosis of an aggressive form of leukemia at the age of 22, I put my faith in medicine.
The bone marrow transplant procedure itself can be dangerous, but it is swift, which makes it feel strangely anti-climactic.
I had worked on dogs for a couple of years developing a renal transplant operation. We had dogs running around with kidneys we had transplanted back into themselves.
My column launched while I was in the bone marrow transplant unit. And I remember waking up the next morning and opening my inbox and seeing hundreds of emails from strangers all around the world.
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