Just when My pill box was looking Drab.

             
      Yea, be positive, keep your chin up, God is in control, but that is not how I feel right now, and neither would you. Not that I don't appreciate your kind words and that you care :) Pretty much knew yesterday when I decided to go have some labs drawn here in Athens that the cancer was back. It was great to see my friends at GA Cancer and have then see Evalyn. They confirmed that today at Emory. Thankfully my husband was able to get off work to watch Evalyn, my brother Daniel took me part of the way to Emory and we met up with Andy, my cousin, then we met my sister at the appointment who took my scrips to the pharmacy, then Andy met back up with Daniel to take me home. Whew! Takes a village to raise a child, my ass, it takes my whole family to get me to the doc and watch the baby. I had some more labs completed at Emory today. One of the labs will indicate if I have a certain genetic mutation where the oral chemo will not be of assistance. The next step after that is getting more donor cells and doing something like a "booster" one time a month, and then there are clinical trails, more chemo, more transplants, more meds, so at least I'm not backed into the wall. There are options. I'm sure someone at Emory today was told that they can't do anything else for them and they have such and such to live. I was not given a prognosis, however, because basically I'm a lab rat and on the breaking ground of new science. They can't give me what hasn't had enough people my age with ALL plus PH positve, post transplant, now relapsed, female that I am. I cried some in the doctors office when I told Dr. Khoury I was scared. He is such a wonderful doctor, I'm so lucky to have him and the other compassionate staff at Emory. He said that this may be lap one of six and to strap on my seatbelt. Is this a Lebanese saying, I'll have to ask him. I stopped one med, reduced one, and added 4 new ones in one day. You don't even want to know the side effects, but one of them, Sprycel (oral chemo), I had a lot of trouble with when I was on it pre-transplant. I didn't ask a lot of questions that I could have today.... it was just all overwhelming.... and I try to keep some composer for the people around me.  Why? I have no idea.
           On Friday, I will have more labs completed and a possible LP to test my spinal fluid to make sure that the cancer has not spread to my spinal cord and brain, which is one of the favorite places for leukemia cells to hide. I'm not sure what all this means right now in relationship to how my life is right now. Do I have to resort back to rules I had 6 months ago? I'm scared to ask. I was just feeling like I was getting in the flow of my "new normal", nothing will ever be "normal" again. But my new normal consists of me exercising by going to dance, yoga class, walking, all without a mask, volunteering with kids music 1x per month, sleeping with my  dog, taking care of my little girl, Evalyn going to play dates, me helping to take care of my grandparents more, cooking more, cleaning more.....you get the idea. I will know more details over the next week or so, in the mean time, I'm just going to try and go about in the "newest normal" I know and pray that I have the strength to so do. God have mercy.