Processing Part I

On November 4, 2006, my grandmother was diagnosed with myelofibrosis. Myelofibrosis is the scarring of the bone marrow brought on by an onslaught of underdeveloped white cells that eventually crowd out the healthy red blood cells, platelets and normal white cells. When blood gets crowded out of the bone marrow, it's forced to form in the liver and spleen causing these organs begin to enlarge and crowd out other organs like the stomach (causing loss of appetite) and lungs (making it difficult to breathe).

Frequent blood and platelet transfusions are necessary to help boost energy and fight off infections (a common cold is potentially deadly to someone with white cells and a fall could be fatal to someone with low platelets), but the effects and sustenance are lessened with each transfusion and the patient is required to get them more frequently until a point when they become 100% transfusion dependent (daily, four-hour transfusions).

It's estimated that about two of every 1,000,000 people are diagnosed with myelofibrosis and of those rare cases, 10% develop into leukemia: That's what happened to my grandmother. Not only is it rare but, for now anyway, it's incurable.

So, that's the disease in a nutshell. There's a whole host of accompanying side-effects that plague people with this disease (like profound nightsweats and constant nausea), but my grandmother rarely mentioned anything about them. In fact, not only did she not complain, she simply refused to put any energy toward the things that were happening to her. She wasn't the complaining type - ever.

She was always much more interested in knowing what was going on in the lives of her family. "It is what it is," she'd say about what was happening to her body. Ah - I get that. There really are some things we have no control over - so why waste energy on fighting it? Still, it was a difficult pill to swallow knowing that she was under attack and that this disease was making it difficult for her to do the things she once enjoyed doing (which ranged over the three-year period from working out and swimming to simply getting out of bed).

I don't know anyone with a stronger PMA (her term for "positive mental attitude") than my grandmother. She had a wonderful life but certainly experienced some devastating events which, individually, might cause anyone else to succumb to pity or woe, but her unwavering graciousness, strength of character and joyful disposition kept her afloat time after time.

More later...