patient

In May 2017, life was good and I was “living the dream”. I had been working full time for about a year after graduating from the University of Kentucky. I was living in Columbus, Ohio, working for an organization that supports children with childhood cancer and catastrophic disease. Everything was on track for my future.

I started to feel sick. At first it seemed like flu-like symptoms of fatigue, racing heartbeat, lack of energy and some bruising that just wouldn’t go away.

In December 1992, I was an 8-year-old, halfway through second grade, when strep throat and a urinary tract infection just wouldn’t go away. A late-night trip to the emergency room revealed dangerously low levels of platelets, which explained this and the severe bruising all over my body and rashes on my joints. My platelets were under 2,000 and I was supposed to have 250,000.

I never thought I would be diagnosed with cancer. I taught exercise classes, walked every day, ate a Mediterranean diet, and paid attention to products I used on my skin.  I became a certified health coach and taught healthy living classes.  

I sat quietly in the oncologist’s office. The doctor confirmed that my diagnosis was MDS and calmly stated, “The average survival term for your kind of MDS is 104 months.” I felt the room spin.

I never have been healthy, and suffered from upper respiratory infections all my life. Kidney and bladder infections plagued me all through college, and I have had a severe hearing loss since birth. I had been diagnosed in 1986 with an IGA deficiency, meaning that I had insufficient immunity although I was treated symptomatically with antibiotics when needed.

Texas native John Vasquez led an active life until he started to experience unusual symptoms in 2015, including an incidence of numbness on one side of his body. The 20-year-old was soon diagnosed with