Thanksgiving 2003

Written last year, but still applicable today. Two big reasons to be thankful.

It was probably Dr. Collins who first brought the possibility to my attention. My chemotherapy would be very strong. Lots of nasty side effects, some short-term, some, maybe, long-term. And this doesn't even include the chance that I might have needed a bone marrow transplant. That process is much more involved, with the stated goal of "obliterating the marrow function."

I don't think it had even been two weeks since my diagnosis, and I'd pretty much focused on what I'd considered a long-term goal: get healthy enough to return to school in the fall. Six months away was about as far down the road as I wanted to plan.

Dr. Collins, on the other hand, was definitely thinking long-term. Before the chemicals started slowly dripping into my Hickman catheter, she asked if I wanted to, umm, make a donation. The phrase "put some sperm on ice" may have entered the conversation. She didn't know. She couldn't say for certain, at my age, with the chemo, with other drugs meant to mitigate the side-effects of the chemo, well, she simply could not say one way or another if I'd ever be able to have children.

I was twenty years old. A month earlier, the most important decision I needed to make was whether or not I wanted to listen to Kate Bush or Neneh Cherry while I played pool with "da boys," whether I would be drinking Beck's or Guiness. The thought of one day having children had never entered the equation. There wasn't much time to decide, and my future vision was still pretty myopic.

I did not, shall we say, make any deposits in the spring of 1990.

Consider me absolutely, eternally, unbelievably thankful for the way things have turned out so far, all things considered.