Neil Rachynski

My Story with AML
 

Every weekend and every night after work, my wife would put on her most optimistic face and sit with me in hospital during my leukemia treatments, and once my immune system improved we would take regular walks around the 14th floor, my floor, for Malignant Hematology. Just a few months earlier we were jogging partners. As we walked by the hospital rooms we would read the names of the other patients, silently taking note of who was new and who had gone, but never so bold as to wonder out loud what became of those who had left the floor. This was not the excitement we had planned when, as empty nesters, we sold our home in BC, downsized, and moved to Toronto for new opportunities and adventure.

Some people soften the word ‘cancer’ by calling this ordeal a ‘journey.’ Maybe saying ‘journey’ helps us keep our dignity when the sense of powerlessness and the humiliations of treatments leave us threadbare, but I’ve never liked the word, unless it’s coming from a travel agent.

And what resolve can you give your children? What do you say to your 18- and 20-year-old kids who are sitting across from you, wearing droplet precautions (face masks, gloves and gowns) to prevent infecting you? “I’ve got this?” My kids had already lost one of their best friends in high school to cancer — leukemia of all things — and lost their grandmother to cancer before that. So they weren’t about to be lulled into too-good-to-be-true stories about beating cancer. What do you tell them? What do you tell yourself? Where do you find your resources in the face of such defenselessness?

For me the answer is Hope. Perhaps it’s bumper-sticker wisdom, but if we can’t choose whether or not we have to go through this, then we can darn sure decide on our attitude. Every day gives us the opportunity to choose Hope. And when my own internal fire wavers, it is my wife, my family and my friends who pick up the slack. Their Hope is infectious in the best of ways, because you can’t go through this alone. You need your people, your team, because sometimes we’re vulnerable when we don’t expect it, and Hope lights the way for all.

We have since moved back to BC, and I am blessed to be a year into remission: I walk as a survivor, and I walk in memory of Karsten.

A warm note of thanks: Tackling leukemia requires teams of people in the medical community, so a big thank you to the emergency room staff at St. Micheal’s, the leukemia team, nurses, housekeeping and researchers at Princess Margaret, the general medicine staff at Toronto General, and the leukemia/bone marrow transplant team at Vancouver General.