How Love Helped Me Face Leukemia and Keep Living

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.

Love is a funny term.

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.

And yet she stayed.

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.

The point was to continue living.

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