By Megan Holohan — Today
laura hendricks In 2018, after her three children came down with colds, she took them to the pediatrician. As the mother described her symptoms, the doctor interrupted.
“She interrupted me mid-sentence and asked, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I was surprised that she was focusing on me and not the kids,” the Chicago-area woman told TODAY.com. “I said, ‘Well, I’m tired and I think I’m sick from what they’ve been through,'” the 46-year-old mother added.
The pediatrician insisted that Laura make an appointment with her own doctor, which she did. Soon after, Laura learned why she looked sick: she had acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
“She was very aggressive,” he said. “(Surviving cancer) was truly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.”
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Your child’s pediatrician discovers a problem
Laura had just returned from a business trip to London and discovered that her three children (aged 5, 4 and 2) were ill, so she made an appointment with the paediatrician.
During the visit, the doctor became concerned about the mother’s health. At first, Laura explained that she was tired, but the specialist persisted.
“She challenged me again and said, ‘No, your complexion doesn’t look good. Let me look at your hands,'” he recalled. “She looked at them and said, ‘I think you should do some blood work.’ ‘”
Laura’s mother accompanied her to the pediatrician’s appointment and insisted that her daughter schedule the appointment.
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“She said, ‘I’m not leaving unless you make the appointment your pediatrician wants because I think something might be wrong,'” Laura said.
Like a good daughter, she made the appointment. Her doctor ran a blood test, and Laura was relieved when she received an automated email informing her that the results were normal.
But the next day, he found himself with missed calls from three doctors. The voicemail confused her at first.
“The last one was from that morning and he said, ‘You have to go to the emergency room,'” he said. “I asked my doctor, ‘What is going on?’ She said, ‘You need a blood transfusion. “
Laura was surprised and asked her why, and she explained that she might have been anemic or “some other disease” that she remembered. On the way to the hospital, she kept receiving automated emails with test results.
Someone noticed something was wrong with her white blood cell count, and Laura remembers thinking it might be a sign of cancer, but she didn’t trust her test.
Once at the hospital, he knew something was wrong.
“They said, ‘You have leukemia and an aggressive disease called AML.’ “The whole world has changed. “
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Anti-money laundering
Acute myeloid leukemia occurs when the bone marrow produces too many abnormal blood cells, according to the National Cancer Institute. It is “the most common type of acute leukemia in adults,” the agency explains.
Still, the condition is rare, occurring in 4 out of every 100,000 adults each year, usually those over age 60, the Cleveland Clinic says. Acute means it has a rapid onset and is aggressive.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, symptoms may include:
- pale skin
- Feeling exhausted or like a cold or flu
- feel dizzy
- bruises easily
- Bleeding gums
- Frequent nosebleeds
- exhausted
- fever
- Headache
- Sweating at night
- Cold sensation
- frequent infections
- unexplained weight loss
- weakness
- Loss of appetite
- Difficulty breathing
- swollen lymph nodes
- red spots on the skin, called petechiae
- sores or open wounds
Treatment may include chemotherapy, monoclonal antibodies, and stem cell transplantation. The Cleveland Clinic explains that when patients are in remission, their blood cell counts are normal and there are no more cancer cells in the bone marrow.
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cancer survivorship
For six months, Laura remained in hospital receiving treatment.
“Because it’s so serious, they admit you to the hospital the same day and start treatment as quickly as possible,” he said. “That was really overwhelming.”
The long days in the hospital meant he had a lot of time to worry about the future.
“(I) had all the feelings that probably every mother or father can relate to: the complete and utter fear of not being their mother,” she admits. “What would happen if I didn’t see them grow up? What if I didn’t see them go to high school and get married? “What would happen if I wasn’t here? ” he added.
He noted that the first month he received intense chemotherapy to treat the cancer, which also “wreaks your entire immune system.” About seven weeks later, when his immune system strengthened, he went home briefly, but had to return again for treatment. He eventually received a stem cell transplant.
Family requests for visits from her children kept her motivated during treatment.
“My mentality is that I’m going to be a survivor,” she said. “What drives me… is my children, my husband and my family. “I really want to be their mother for the rest of my life. “
After a stem cell transplant, Laura went into remission and has been cancer-free for the past five years.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said. “I didn’t relapse.”
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Help others survive
About 15 months after her diagnosis, Laura felt like she was “coming out of the woods.” Her energy returned and she was able to keep up with the kids again.
It was then that he began to face the trauma he had experienced. Her husband, Brock, helped her start life as a survivor.
“He was the first one to start noticing the changes he was seeing in me and wanted to work on how (we could) help me,” she said.
They focused on how I could get more and better quality sleep, express gratitude, eat healthily, and address some of the difficult emotions I face as a survivor, like guilt.
Soon, Laura realized that “some of the habits I focused on in small doses helped me feel more positive, excited, and optimistic about my own existence.”
She and her husband wondered if the small daily changes that worked for her could also help other cancer survivors. She then began to reflect on all the privileges in her life that made it easier for her to survive, such as access to therapy and child care, which many other survivors did not have.
So she and Bullock founded Luminaries to provide cancer survivors with self-care kits and teach them other ways to recover.
“We really wanted to help survivors,” Laura recalls. “That’s where we see (the biggest) lack of resources.”
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For example, Laura said it’s common for cancer patients to live far from where they receive treatment. So when they’re done, they’re returned to an “island” where there may not be much medical support, he explained.
Laura added: “Everyone deserves access to best-in-class, science-backed programs that guide their survival in the same way they receive treatment.”
“One of the hardest things about survival is how do you get up every day and take the next step on your own?”
Luminaries self-care packages are delivered to survivors’ homes with the goal of helping them develop healthy habits to better cope with what’s ahead.
Sleep: Laura says many cancer patients have trouble sleeping well during treatment, and as survivors, they need more sleep.
Sleep kits provide education on eye masks and techniques such as meditation or yoga nidra to encourage more restful sleep.
Laura said Luminaries provides cancer patients with support that many simply don’t have.
“I’m so grateful every day that they gave me the opportunity to stay here and be a mother, a sister, a wife, a daughter and a friend,” she said. “I know how difficult it is for me to survive with these advantages. “All I want to do is make it easier for other people to survive. “
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