Chaipat Tirapongprasert

Facing leukemia and uncertainty, I leaned on love and resolve to keep living day by day, despite fear and an unknown future ahead.

Two years ago, P sat beside me as the oncologist handed me my cytogenic report and said some ominous words about leukemia, multiple chromosomal abnormalities, and poor prognosis. She reached through the side rail of the bed, sliding her hand into mine.

“I don’t want to die,” I said, clinging to her grip like the rest of my life depended on it. Although I had hoped to be stoic and nod along as if this were just another hurdle, those words slipped out before I could swallow them back. I told P she should find someone else. She tightened her grip and said she loved me.

I had heard them before but never internalized them. The words tasted foreign, like they were intended for someone else. P often told me she loved me. And for the longest time, all I could do was offer a quick smile and return the remark in a manner akin to saying “good morning.” A polite but shallow reflex. I had never learned how to let love settle inside me, to let it press against the hollows I had carved out for myself.

She stayed when my life veered off course and the doors I thought were within my reach slammed shut. She stayed through the doctor's appointments, the infusions, the biopsies, the nausea, the sleepless nights, the weight loss, the complications. She held my hand as I stared in the mirror and saw a pale, gaunt stranger staring back. She stayed even when I pushed her away.

Most people, particularly those in their twenties, live their lives under the assumption that death will strike them at some point—but certainly not today or in the coming decades. As a result, they spend their entire lives accumulating potential energy, like a ball perched atop a hill, waiting and brimming with possibility. Some succeed in turning it into motion, while others just let it stagnate.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Many people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until they are seventy-five.” Sometimes we trade risk for comfort or passion for practicality. Dreams crumble. Friendships fade. Death by a thousand cuts. Little by little, the person we once were erodes, piece by piece, until one day we wake up unrecognizable.

Determining the best course of action for the time I had left was harder than expected. My background in science had taught me how to analyze probabilities and interpret data, but as a patient, it was utterly useless. While science could provide me with the likelihood of surviving five years for an individual with my age and diagnosis, it failed to tell me if P and I should have children or whether I should reclaim my ambition and continue my studies.

My near-death experience was paradoxical in that I knew I would die, but I did not know when — it might be in another year or forty. Such uncertainty is exhausting. The nurses always told me to take it one day at a time, as if that would alleviate the anxiety, despite the fact that I still had no idea what to do with that day.

After my first lumbar puncture, I awoke every day for two weeks to constant, excruciating pressure behind my eyes, so intense that even lifting my head was unbearable. Sitting on the table next to me, just out of reach, was my breakfast tray. To eat, I would have to sit up and bear the erratic spike of pressure at the base of my skull. I lay motionless, gazing at the ceiling.

“This is too much,” I thought, and a tiny but resolute voice chimed in with a four-word mantra — the same one that helped me overcome my stuttering before every impromptu speech contest — “I will not yield.” I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and pushed myself up, the entire room spinning. “This is too much,” but I will not yield. I took a step forward, and then another.

Yes, death is unsettling, but until then, living is the only choice.

That morning, P and I asked the social worker for the sperm bank’s contact information. Because of the medications I was taking, I could not leave the hospital, so the carrier fee might be high. We discussed it and decided to move forward. I also composed an email to my advisor with the subject line: Readmission Request for Fall 2024. There was no assurance that any of this would bear fruit. But certainty was not the point.

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Articles

Faced with a leukemia diagnosis and a poor prognosis, the narrator grapples with the fear of death and the challenge of living meaningfully. Despite the uncertainty of their future, they find strength in the unwavering support of their partner, P, who remains by their side through the trials of illness. The narrative explores the tension between scientific understanding and personal decision-making, ultimately emphasizing the importance of choosing to live fully despite the unknowns. The narrator resolves to pursue life goals, underscoring the resilience of the human spirit.

How Love Helped Me Face Leukemia and Keep Living

Despite trying to rationalize it, cancer oftentimes does not make sense. 

Today I poked at my brain. Well, first I watched the doctor poke at my brain on the computer screen.

“This isn’t pretty,” he said, pointing to a mysterious grey blotch nestled deep within the folds of my meninges. “See this area here? That’s new growth since your last scan.”

The digital scan alone was insufficient for the doctors to determine what the invading agent was. At first, he thought it was something benign that had been there since I was born. But now that we could witness its growth, the terrifying possibility that the leukemia had spread to my brain began to emerge.

All my medical records now bore the word 

urgent” printed in red ink. I sat there in shock, staring at the screen, wondering how this could be possible. “Fighting cancer is like fighting Mike Tyson,” my oncologist used to say. “Once we’ve got him on the ropes, don’t let up. C

 him under your feet before he can resurge.”

 it we did. Within the last three months alone, I have had three lumbar punctures, all of which required me to lie on my side at the edge of the narrow hospital bed, curled into a fetal position with a pillow between my knees. The doctor would then stab my lower back with a stainless-steel needle to inject chemotherapy drugs into my spinal canal. This was a gut-wrenching procedure that left me with a dull, agonizing headache for weeks. And yet, I grimly bore it, believing it was the cost of keeping the cancer at bay.

I wouldn’t pretend to be a stoic Spartan, plowing through this with a grin and a giggle. I worried. I cried. My mind raced at night, wondering if I would make it to another Christmas. 

, I thought to myself. We took every conceivable precaution, bombarding the disease with every weapon in the arsenal.

So how, despite all our overkill measures, did it still manage to turn feral and spread? 

Was it my diet that made the cancer aggressive? Maybe I hadn’t exercised or de-stressed enough to bolster my immune system. Or perhaps it was the air quality; ugh, I really shouldn’t have moved to New York.

I kept picking at these possibilities, grasping for reasons why this was happening to me rather than someone else. Isn’t that what we humans do: incessantly search for patterns, for narratives, for some greater significance in the randomness of existence? Lying on the grass, we gaze up at the drifting clouds and suddenly the leftmost one takes on the shape of a dolphin. We can make out the curved nose, the sleek body, and even the little tail fluke. It feels so real that you half expect it to whistle at you before dissipating back into cottony vapors.

Just like how we see familiar faces in the clouds or detect shapes among the scattered stars, we conjure up overly simplistic narratives to explain away the illogical misfortunes that befall us and others. It’s a coping mechanism of sorts, a way to rationalize the absurd and find comfort in the unknown. At the end of the day, the idea that the universe follows a fair and logical chain of causes and effects seems much more attractive than the alternative.

Unfortunately, there’s no rationale behind cancer. On my better days, you can’t even tell if there’s anything wrong just by looking at me. When steroids don’t disrupt my sleep schedule, when my pain is under control, when I feel strong enough to walk to the bathroom or open up my laptop and type these words, I almost feel like a reasonably healthy 20-year-old.

Passing me down the street, you would notice my brown waistcoat, Ray-Ban sunglasses and the winter blue beanie hat from Old Navy, which did its best to conceal the thinning hair on the back of my head

as, of course, there’re so many in this downtown area

Never would you have guessed that I was ill, or that I had dropped out of college a year ago to get treatment, or that I had just been pumped full of reddish chemical from a bag with a skull and crossbones emblem through a grafted plastic tube — a tube that had three bulbous lumens, a tube that protruded from beneath my collarbone and threaded its way into my heart’s veins.

It’s easy to forget that everyone is fighting their own onerous battles. Behind each indistinguishable face is a universe of lives, dreams, fears, heartbreaks and struggles that are invisible to the outside world. We put on our bravest faces and carry ourselves with as much flair and courage as we can muster. Hidden in plain sight, we’re all valiant warriors at heart.

This post was written and submitted Chaipat

Tirapongprasert. The article reflects the views of Tirapongprasert and not of CURE®. This is also not supposed to be intended as medical advice.

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to 

I kept picking at these possibilities, grasping for reasons why cancer  was happening to me rather than someone else.

Chaipat Tirapongprasert

How Love Helped Me Face Leukemia and Keep Living

Irrational Cancer: Nothing About This Disease Makes Sense

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