Life, Interrupted: The Patient in the Mirror

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/life-interrupted-the-patient-in-the-mirror/

"Today, I’m writing from a hospital bed in New York City. I’m in the bone marrow transplant unit, where this week I’ve undergone 20 intensive chemotherapy treatments in anticipation of receiving my brother’s stem cells. In the year since my diagnosis with leukemia, I’ve struggled to hold onto a sense of who I am while I watch the person in the mirror change.

...In the oncology ward, I still felt invisible, flying under the radar with my waist-length hair and the nose ring I got when I was 14. In the waiting room at my second appointment, a man with a sleeveless shirt and a bandanna covering his hairless head leaned in toward my father, who’s been bald since the ’80s, and raised his fist in the air: “Live strong, brother,” he said. Later, my dad and I had a good laugh about the mix-up — it helped ease our tight nerves for a moment. But I remember also feeling slighted, as though my terrible new disease wasn’t being acknowledged.

...When I finally returned home after my five-week hospitalization, I could feel the stares of strangers on my bald head and thinning eyebrows. Everywhere I went, cancer spoke for me before I could say the first word. Once, I even overheard a child asking her mother why there was a boy in the girls’ bathroom.

...Now, here in the bone marrow unit, where I’m required to be in isolation to prevent infections, I’m surrounded 24/7 by the gaze of people who, first and foremost, are concerned with what I have — not necessarily who I am. Doctors in face masks stand over my hospital bed, peering down at me. Eyes and ties. And white lab coats. Voices without mouths discuss me as if I weren’t in the room. They give the Patient a hospital gown. The Patient is talked at, looked at, probed, prodded and whispered about. But after all, it’s their job to see me as Patient. The goal is to cure the Patient so she can return to being herself. But until then, it’s hard not to feel like just a body..."


Life, Interrupted: A Young Cancer Patient Faces Infertility
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/life-interrupted-a-young-cancer-patient-faces-infertility/

"The family minivan idles at the intersection of 59th and York in Midtown Manhattan. My boyfriend swabs my midriff with alcohol as he steadies the needle. My parents look on from the front seat, quietly studying their 22-year-old daughter and the young man they’ve known for only a month. The needle is filled with gonadotropin, a hormone that stimulates the ovaries to produce eggs. I’m late for my checkup at the fertility clinic.

How in the world did I get here?

Last spring, I found out I had leukemia. Before the horror of the news even had time to sink in, I had to absorb a second shock: The chemotherapy treatments that could save my life would also make me infertile.

Leukemia is an emergency, and oncologists are the first responders: They are trained to beat cancer; everything else must take a back seat. It was only after I asked about fertility that the doctors told me about the available options..."