Matt's story really goes back about 15 months. December of 2010 Matt had scratched his cornea. He was experiencing blurry vision and pain in his eye. He was treated and his eye was back to normal in about a week. A month or so later Matt went to the doctor for his annual physical and blood work. At this point his blood work was normal. Matt had been experiencing swelling and pain from time to time in both of his ankles. He chalked this up to old volleyball injuries. I found this to be a little odd, but didn't think much of it. Towards the end of the summer of 2011 I did start noticing some weight loss and others had been commenting on this as well, but at the time he was doing P90X. In November we went to a wedding and the following day I noticed a very large, very black bruise on his back. He said it was probably from dancing at the wedding. I will say he was a dancing fool that night, but it looked like he got hit with a baseball. Finally on 12/8 Matt went to the eye doctor because he was experiencing what he thought was another scratched cornea. It was not and he was sent to a specialist. The specialist urged him to see his pcp for blood work. The morning of 12/9 he got his blood work done and around 4 that day his pcp called and said you need to go to the hospital right now, the ER is waiting for you, it's cancer. Oddly enough I'm grateful for the doctor being so frank, give it to me all at once, let me figure out how to process it. The waiting and not knowing is so very difficult.
I met Matt at the hospital and we were told it was leukemia. They were unsure what type, but his white blood cell count was so high he was at risk of a brain hemorrhage. There is a machine that can quickly begin bring your white blood cell count down. Unfortunately the hospital we were at did not have one. The plan was to life flight him to Hershey medical center. While waiting for them to approve this we found out their were five people on a wait list for this machine. UPenn had a machine and had approved Matt for admittance and we were on our way. It was a very long night, both us very quiet and nodding at all the info being thrown at us. When Matt finally spoke he said, " I'm so ashamed of doing this to my family." My heart crumbled, he had not once thought of himself and I loved him more in that moment than I thought possible.
It would be two more days before they discovered the Philadelphia chromosome and we got the cml diagnosis. We had already planned on being at UPenn for 6 weeks to start intensive chemotherapy. Elated can not justify the feeling I had when told you will be headed home in a few days, home for Christmas. That's what we did, headed home to celebrate our daughters 3rd birthday and Christmas.
At my insistence Matt took a month of work off. I knew that everything in our life had to change. We had to both be as healthy as possible to manage this and be strong for our children. To manage this you really need your mind, body and soul to be healthy. That meant a lot of things. Completely changing our diet, much to the dismay of Matt. At one time cancer patients were told to take it easy, rest as much as you can. That's not the case any more, exercise is key to feeling good through out this treatment. It helps battle many of the side effects of Gleevec and is a huge stress reliever. Matt goes to the gym religiously and is currently training for a triathlon. I'm so proud, hopefully one day I can join him and we can do one together.
Matt is taking Gleevec, which he will take for the rest of his life. Our hope and prayers are that Gleevec continues to work and his body continues to tolerate this powerful drug. His side effects are minimal, most have gone away. He still has problems with his eyes. Hopefully over time that will subside. If Gleevec stops working or he is unable to tolerate it there are other drugs that he will try. Hopefully we never get to this point, but a last option would be a bone marrow transplant.
So today our family is living a very normal life, well our new normal. Our new normal is a family that is much more connected, laughs more, loves more, takes life one day at a time and really appreciates the little things. We feel very blessed every day. I couldn't imagine something good coming out of this, but it has. Seeing friends, family and even strangers come together in our time of need has been amazing. I will forever be so grateful to everyone that has supported us through this. We promise to pay it forward!
