Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML)

The first time I heard about this term is when I read my mom's medical diagnosis letter. Some people would be familiar with Leukemia. You might hear it when you watch soap operas, dramas, or movies. And some of you might realize the ending, like shorting your due date to leave this world. Who knows that this disease would be really close to my life. It's something unprecedented thing. I hardly tried to obtain much information about it. Reading blogs, journals, and joining the community are the things that I have been doing since that time.  I thought it was like a bomb. If you do not treat it well, it will blow up anytime. 

The first thing I do is calming myself. focus on the problem. And try to do an act that I must do. The challenging thing is not about medication, but how you communicate with your family, the patient, my mom. I need to convince her to follow the medication. I need to do the best I can. Therefore, I started to explore all the resources. One thing that I believe, all of us already have our time to leave, we hold our time, whether we are healthy or sick, the death time will come. However, you can do your best for your beloved ones so there is no regret when the time has come.  

Anyway, the long story begins...

In February, my mom was hospitalized at a local hospital. it was accounted that her white blood cell surged around 350k. It is 35 times higher than the normal range, which is 4k-10k. Her belly looked like a pregnant woman because her spleen enlarged. her Red blood cell fell to 7.6 (the normal account for women is 11 to 16). 

'She needs blood transfusion', the internist explained. 

My dad and I spent four days in the hospital. Taking care of my mom while she got 3 tubes of blood transfusion. Seeing her struggle and feeling uncomfortable with IV made me heartbroken.

Although the blood transfusion was successful, my mom's hemoglobin count did not show increasing. She felt depressed because of the difficulty of being embedded with an IV in her hand, fever after transfusion, and swelling hand.

Finally, she asked for discharging in the hospital. The doctor agreed. When he walked out of the room. I ran to him, asked what happened to my mother. 

"What is actually my mom's disease?"

Rather than answering my questions, He just threw a question. 

"Do you think what else it is? You've already known that, don't you?"