When Megan Johnson was 21 months old, a large tumor collapsed her lung and pushed her heart to the other side of her chest. It was a primitive neuroectodermal tumor (PNET), a rare and very aggressive type of cancer. Doctors advised her parents that her chances of survival were less than 10 percent.
Four weeks after her 33rd birthday, Crystal found a lump in her breast. When she told a good friend and co-worker — whose mother happened to be in treatment for metastatic breast cancer — the friend told her, “Don’t mess around.”
My son, David, was 13 years old when he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). My husband and I are both medical professionals, and cancer never entered our minds when David exhibited signs of fatigue, sore throat and listlessness.
There are countless things to say about going through cancer treatment and testing, but in my experience, it’s the elements of survivorship that often go ignored or are put off to deal with at a later date.
If spring is best greeted in a garden then I was fortunate to be in Buffalo in the spring, while my husband Roman was receiving his BMT at Roswell Park. We had arrived in mid-March (just as winter was ending) for Roman to be admitted. I was staying at the nearby Kevin Guesthouse.
A solid ten years of dreaming and planning finally came to fruition only to go up in flames thanks to a 30-minute doctor appointment on the Upper West Side. The culprit? Cancer.