Sometimes devastating news comes suddenly, and sometimes in slow motion.
After the birth of twin girls, my daughter, began to complain of fatigue. But who wouldn’t be tired, raising twins?
Then there were the bruises.
Blood tests showed a low platelet count. Platelets help the blood clot. You can live with low platelets, as long as they don’t go too low. We were told she had ITP (Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura), which basically means you have low platelets and no one knows why.
Not so bad. Except for the inconvenience of special preparations for normal procedures like going to the dentist, and the fatigue, not so bad.
You can still laugh and have a good quality of life.
I know we could have become anxious, fearful, and obsessive with worry. But that is not the way we choose. There is always time for bad news and not everything that could become bad, does. If you can’t do anything to remedy a situation, why ruin the present moment?
We put the news of this blood disorder on the back burner and went about our business.
In 2015 my daughter’s platelet count began to drop significantly, and bruising became more severe.
A biopsy was taken. Her cheerful doctor (who I call Dr. La Di Dah), reported the results: “You don’t have ITP, but rather MDS (Myelodysplastic Syndrome). “But you are young, your genetic tests are good. You can live a long long time with this problem.
Above all do not be concerned. You are low risk. Let’s move on, shall we?
Whew!
I was suspicious of Dr. La Di Dah’s cheerful attitude and felt we needed a more grown up assessment.
Meanwhile I took to Google, the knower of all things, to see what Wikipedia had to say:
I read: “Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) are a group of cancers in which immature blood cells in the bone marrow do not mature and therefore do not become healthy blood cells.
Some types may develop into AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia).”
Acronyms, Alphabet soups, these are bad signs, like Pentagon Black Ops codes: hidden, secret, not for public viewing.
The sages teach that nothing happens in this world without being announced in advance. Now the dreams of tidal waves that both my daughter and I had, independent of each other, reveal their meaning.
