I've answered the call to be a hero! I'm having my head shaved to stand in solidarity with kids fighting cancer, and to honor my friend Sarah McMahon who lost the battle last year, but more importantly, to raise money to find cures. Please support me with a donation to the St. Baldrick's Foundation. This volunteer-driven charity funds more in childhood cancer research grants than any organization except the U. S. government. Your gift will give hope to infants, children, teens and young adults fighting childhood cancers. So when I ask for your support, I'm really asking you to support these kids. Thank you! Click "Make a donation" to give online, or donate by phone or mail.
Sarah's story is both heart warming and tragic. Please read this passage from her Caring Bridge page, and know as you read this that it is in her own words. This is her story and her story is the reason we're doing this. (Have tissues handy).
Well lets think about how this started. It could have started way back when in May or it could have started on our trip to Hawaii this summer. I started have periods more often, like every 9 days. And they lasted for longer than a week, fun huh? After finishing the school year, my mom just finished her radiation for breast cancer in June, my grandfather passed away April 5th, two jobs were lost in a two year span, we had to move out of our house and our doggy passed away January 6th so we were ready for are awesome adventure in Hawaii, hopefully a happy turn around for us. It was incredible and awesome and unbelievable.
When we came back from Hawaii I got my boating license, my scuba diving license and began to work at Watermark Cruises in Downtown Annapolis. Having too many periods started to worry us so we went to the doctors and I was put on a birth control pill to regulate me (September 1st).
School was starting up again and I started feeling tired and weak, which I blamed on school, work, and theater. On one specific work day, a Saturday, on the Harbor Queen (my favorite cruise) I started getting a sore throat and everything hurt. I had started developing a cold. After about a little over a week with that I started having nausea in the mornings and never having an appetite. I also had the occasional dizzy spell which I usually ended up sitting on the floor. We kept relating this to the new Birth Control Pill because that's the only new thing that we thought would be changing. We figured we would wait until the 3rd week of September and I would be on the "placebo" week of the pill, which basically means "dummy pill." My doctor said to see if I went off the pill for that week and I had less nausea then I would know if the pill was causing it or not.
On Wednesday the 14th i got a haircut, which ironically there was a little girl getting her hair cut short for locks of love. Then we moved on to a chiropractic appointment because my neck and back was hurting.
After school I would go to tech until 10 of 6 everyday and would have trouble walking up our three flights of stairs to our apartment which I never had a problem with. On one of the days that week I just felt so awful I just got in the car and started crying.
On the 16th of September there was the homecoming football game and it was raining buckets. I decided not to go due to the fact that I felt like crap and didn't want my cold to get any worse. On Saturday the 17th (my friend Brian and Megan's birthday, also the homecoming dance) I pulled myself out of bed to scrounge round for some breakfast which resulted in me getting dizzy and ending up on the kitchen floor. We decided to go to the doctors before my moms Silpada party with our friend Mrs. Terry begun at 2:00. I was examined and wanted to give me albuterol but one of the side effects was rapid heartbeat, which I already have so we decided against that one. She told us to get a nedi pot, cough medicine, and a decongestant. All my doctor said was that I had a virus and shouldn't go to work the next day.
We had the Silpada party and it was a success. I even got to go the homecoming but came home a little early because I wasn't feeling 100%. On Sunday I just laid around and did some homework. When my mom got home from work that night she noticed multiple bruises on my legs which I blamed on setting a gangway (from work) down on my leg and multiple other things such as running into doors or stubbing my toes which I attributed to my clumsy self.
Monday morning I thought I felt well enough to go to school, I had no fever that morning so I thought it would be alright. I proceeded to get myself ready for school and was heading for the bathroom when I felt another dizzy spell and slumped on the bathroom floor in my moms arms.
Thats when we called the doctor and they told us to go to the ER because they thought it was related to my heart condition I was diagnosed with last year. They did and blood test and an EKG which was fine, but my blood test came back "wacky" as they said. They did a second one to make sure. And they took my parents out of the room to chat, which is never a good sign. My dad put it all together before the doctor told us that I had Leukemia.
