on war and health

When my husband came home from Afghanistan last year [wow, I cannot believe he's been home a few days shy of a year already] I asked him how he thought he had changed. One of the first things he mentioned was that he had new perspective on what really mattered in life -- if you aren't bleeding to death, losing limbs or otherwise dying -- things were ok. 

From time to time, the attitude infuriated me. I would be upset about something and I would want him to be riled up about it too and he just wouldn't. I would want him to join me in my frustration and/or commiserate with me, but instead he would push me towards a solution. If I wasn't ready to take action towards a solution -- read: I wanted to throw myself a bit of a pity party -- I shouldn't expect him to come to my rescue. 

I've grown accustomed to it, and in all reality it has made me much more action-oriented and active in working out a solution. It has made me more independent and stronger, but it is still a tough pill to swallow from time to time. 

Now that I've been in the hospital for three weeks as of tomorrow night, it is all the more hammered home. I've done my best to not take things for granted, but this experience has been humbling in more ways than one.

I have had to face my own mortality -- last Friday I was diagnosed with Aplastic Anemia. It is an autoimmune disorder where my own cells are attacking my bone marrow and have caused it to fail. A normal female of my age has marrow with 75% cellularity. Mine is 2%. 

If I hadn't come into the hospital on November 19th, I would have died -- according to the nurses either by brain hemorrhage or stroke. 

If I do not get a bone marrow transplant, I will eventually die from complications of the disease. 

My husband has been my rock throughout all of this, especially since this falls into his bleeding/loss of limbs/life category! :) He has reminded me that while this all is super scary, people die crossing the street every day and you aren't always lucky enough to be able to fix that. 

I have an option -- a fix -- transplant. 

While it will involve months of hospitalization and treatment, there is an 85% success rate [as long as they find a donor match]. I try my best to focus on that number, and not the fact that there is a 15% chance of death throughout the chemotherapy/transplant/graft-vs-host disease process. 

The outpouring of support I've received has been tremendous and overwhelming [in a positive way!] and I feel so fortunate to have so many people in different areas of my life reaching out and helping me to stay positive through all of this. 

I leave you all with one request tonight [aside from thoughts and prayers.. man, I'm getting greedy!] -- to potentially save my life or someone else's -- by becoming a bone marrow donor through the National Marrow Donor Program at BeTheMatch.org. If you have any questions about the process [I've had my marrow sampled three times now, woo], please feel free to check out the site or email me at notallthosewhowander [at] gmail [dot] com. 

As always, thank you for all of your love and support.