Chapter 12
1032 Words
“Acute myeloid leukemia?” Olivia Jameson’s voice was thin. “What is it, exactly, Em?”
Emma swallowed hard. “It’s – it’s bad, Liv.”
“How bad?” Jennifer Sawyer asked. “What are we talking about here?”
Emma looked around at her friends. All three of them were pale with shock but calm and supportive. She knew she wasn’t alone in this.
She picked up a small pile of folders. “I printed out everything you’ll need to know… this material will tell you more than I can.”
Katherine Lawrence managed a grin. “Leave it to you, to prepare instructional and informational materials for us.” She took the folder. “Is it all color-coded, too?”
Emma feigned indignation. “Of course!”
Kat shook her head; her shoulder-length hair was platinum blonde this week and it moved around her face like a wave. “Yeah, figures.”
The women flipped the folders open and glanced through the contents. Liv’s round brown eyes got wider and wider as she read the symptoms. She looked up at Emma.
“So this is why you’ve been feeling short of breath?”
“Yeah.” Emma added milk to her coffee. “AML also explains my dizzy spells and being cold all the time.”
Jenny set down the folder and brushed her long blonde hair back. “OK, Em. Give it to us straight, alright? How bad is bad?”
Emma sighed. She had asked her friends over to her place that morning after seeing that she had missed twenty-four calls from the day before. She knew they were panicked as hell about her not being in touch, and they had appeared at her front door within an hour of her calls. They’d do whatever she needed and wanted. The problem was that she had no idea what that might be.
“OK. In a nutshell, here it is: acute myeloid leukemia pushes out normal blood-making cells in bone marrow and replaces them with leukemia cells. Pretty much everything I’ve been experiencing lately – exhaustion, weight-loss, those weird fevers, all my bruising – is because the cancer has crowded out my healthy blood cells and taken over.”
“Red cells? White ones?” Jenny asked.
“Both. And my blood platelets too, so I’m at risk for excessive bleeding if I cut myself. A small nick with a knife can bleed for ages, for example, since my clotting abilities have been compromised.”
“Fuck.” Liv’s voice was soft.
“Yeah.”
“What do you do now?” Kat said, her dark green eyes very steady. “Chemo? What?”
“Yeah,” Emma said. “Doctor Fife has me booked in for chemotherapy starting from next week. That’s it for now, besides some oral medication and lots of rest.”
“Your job?” Jenny asked.
Emma shrugged. “I’ll work for as long as I have the energy to stay vertical and listen to my patients talk.”
They looked at her quietly.
“You sure, Emma?” Kat said. “You sure you can handle listening to other people’s problems and trauma while you’re dealing with all of this?”
Emma nodded. “I think it’ll help me. It’ll give me something to focus on besides myself. But I will need to tell Doctor Granger about my diagnosis, since I’m going to need lots of time off, and we’ll have to make arrangements for my patients. Plus, the HR department will have to fill in a metric ton of paperwork for my medical insurance.” She grinned wryly. “Helen will be thrilled.”
“And what do we do?” Liv said. “Tell us.”
She shrugged. “Just – just be here. That’s it.”
Jenny shook her head. “Not enough for me. When do you have chemo next week?”
“I go to the hospital and get all hooked up on Tuesday. I’ll have to stay for the first few times, then eventually, I may be able to take the chemo with me. It can be done with machines that are small enough to strap around your waist now. In future, I can do chemo at home, I hope.”
“I’ll be there on Tuesday.”
“Jenny, you don’t have to…”
Jenny cut her off. “Shut up. I’ll be there and I’ll get you home afterwards.”
“Thanks,” Emma said, tears stinging her eyes. “I’d – I’d be very grateful.”
“And after?” Kat said.
“After what?”
“After the chemo? Won’t you be sick? Vomiting and stuck in bed?”
Emma bit her lip. “Nobody can say… Doctor Fife told me that sometimes the reaction to chemo is worse than at other times. At worst, I could be in bed, puking my guts up for two or three days after. Or I could be totally fine, and able to go about my life like nothing at all is going on.”
“And that’s it? That’s the plan?” Liv said.
“What do you mean?” Emma said.
“Just chemo?”
“For now,” Emma said. “If that doesn’t work, then I have another few rounds with new drugs or combinations. Then we look at stem cell transplants to replenish my bone marrow.”
“What?” Kat said. “A transplant?”
“Hey,” Emma said. “That’s for us to worry about later, OK? Much later. Right now, the course of treatment is chemo and rest. Everything else can wait.”
She didn’t mention that she’d need a number of additional tests to make sure that the cancer wasn’t spreading to her spine or brain, or what it meant if the cancer did actually reach those parts of her body. She also didn’t tell them that AML was a cancer that was known to spread quickly, so treatment had to be aggressive. They’d see all that in their folders, when they got to them.
That’s enough reality for now, for all of us.
- Writer
