What in the hell happened?

Well, I planned to use this domain for some cool, nerdy dev stuff, but "Sarah Develops...Leukemia" kind of works too. I decided to at least try to start a blog to let people know what's going on because I'd like to be in touch with everyone but I'm sure pretty soon I just won't have the energy to tell everyone everything separately.

So, how did I get to be laying in a bed on the 5th floor of the Denver VA hospital?

I got my first headache on July 15th, just over a month ago now. Brent and I and Pisco went on a long hike in Golden Gate Canyon State Park. All the wildflowers were out, and we saw a moose (my first Colorado moose sighting ever). It was a pretty ideal day. I drove home, parked the car, walked into the house, and was suddenly hit by a pounding stop-you-in-your-tracks kind of headache. I learned later that it was a thunderclap headache, and I started getting them every few days. Then they became more frequent. I took ibuprofen to keep the headaches under control, and I figured they would go away eventually.

Things were a little busy for me then. I went to Elizabeth's wedding and saw all my cousins which was great because they're all so cute. I went to UberConf. I traveled to Eureka, CA for Erin's wedding with Amie and Dave. We went backpacking, watched the bears and bats go by, watched Bourbon eat a toad, saw a lot of old friends. I traveled to Boise and saw the Wells Fargo project I was working on with Brett go live.

All that happened in the month it took for me to finally go to the ER. The ER doc sent me home and told me to follow up with my regular doc in Golden the following week. That Monday, August 14, I was told there was something unusual about the blood they took at the ER. A few too many immature red blood cells, or blasts. I had the test repeated that day, and it didn't seem like a big deal to me. I have been told before I'm not quite anemic, but I'm at the low end of normal for red blood cell count, so I wasn't concerned. I was more concerned about potentially having a blood clot in my brain.
The next day, Tuesday, I was having a really good Japanese lunch with Brent when I got a call from Dr. Tejas Patil, a Hem/Onc fellow. He was called by someone in Pathology who was looking at my blood, and he wanted to get me in soon for a bone marrow biopsy.

I thought 'that sounds painful'. And then I thought 'there's no way I have leukemia'.
Thursday I started having fleeting weakness in my limbs, and went back to the ER still thinking I had a blood clot in my brain somewhere. They did an expedited MRI and MRV to look at my brain and in particular the blood vessels draining blood from my head. I thought if anything would show up in any test, it would be this one. But there was nothing there.

The bone marrow biopsy the next day, Friday August 18th, wasn't the most fun I've had. I learned that my bones are like rocks, and the instrument they poke in to the pelvis isn't easy to poke in to the pelvis. I kept thinking about the tree cores I used to take, and why can't they have a tool like that?
The best part of the bone marrow biopsy was that it got rid of my headache. I went home in a good mood, so I was a little surprised when Dr. Patil called me a few hours later to tell me the cells he saw in the sample he took were concerning, and that I would need to return to the hospital on Monday for a month of chemotherapy.

Brent was with me then too, and gave me a shoulder to cry on. Daniel happened to be in town, and called me a couple hours later. He and Mom came for a slumber party that night. We ate Chinese food and watched the original Superman.

This is an awkward time to end this post, but I need to go eat breakfast.