Electra & AML: The fear factor

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)


So, one of the biggest things with cancer of any kind is the fear. And I've been thinking about this a lot since we got the diagnosis. Am I scared? Should I be scared? What about Electra? Should she be? And in the end, I don't know. As weird as it sounds, I can't tell if I'm scared or not.

On the one hand, I'm a numbers guy, bound by logic and science. And the numbers, so far as I can gather, are promising. Electra has a lot in her favour: she's young and generally healthy. She's got good support (including yours truly) and the hospital seems really on top of their game. Her parents have sought some outside advice from a friend-of-a-cousin who happens to be a bone marrow specialist at the Mayo clinic who says the treatment she's on is good and generally pretty effective. So overall, I am confident that she'll get through this.

But there are times when it can be hard to see. Electra seems to react quite poorly to one of the chemotherapy drugs, called atopside. This is administered once per day for the first five days of her treatment, and every time she's gotten it (she's just completed day six now), she gets dizzy and nauseous, sometimes even weak and cold (like yesterday). When this happens, it can be scary. Because it's one thing to know that the numbers are on your side, it's quite another to see the one you love shaking from the cold in a very warm room as the walls spin around her.

It's like any other semi-irrational fear. For example, there are a great many people living in Canada or the UK who are afraid of snakes. Now, there are no poisonous snakes in either country, but that fear is imprinted on our brains and it can take hold, logic be damned. But the thing to do is accept that your body feels the fear but you control your reactions. I saw a World War Two show on TV once where a soldier who'd fought in D-Day said that courage isn't not being afraid, it's being afraid but doing what you have to do anyway.

So am I scared? Maybe a little. But the doctors aren't and that gives me hope. The trends back up my confidence-AML is beatable and she has a lot working for her. So when the bad times hit and she seems frail and weakened… well, that's just when it's time to steel my nerves and remember the reality: things are OK. There will be good days and bad, high energy and low. This is part of the process and she will get through it. We will get through it. Scared or not, we will push once more into that breech dear friends.