I have been avoiding posting anything the last few days. I’ve gotten myself into a funk that I’m having a really hard time shaking. I have gone to some bad places in my head and I am trying desperately to refocus but it isn’t working very well. The delay in my schedule has given me far too much time to think and also far too many more things to worry about. Worry is always a waste but it is so hard to ignore.

Yesterday was also Halloween which was supposed to be this joyous 1-year anniversary of my coming home from my last transplant and instead, here we are again, in a much harder place. Rather than reflecting on how much I’ve overcome in the past year and a half, I feel like I have been thrown backwards. It is so hard to write about all of this because the emotions and the fears just pour out of me in tears. I want to be strong and fearless but I can’t help but be so afraid of what all of this means for me and my children. I did a terrible thing and took to the internet looking for hope and inspirational stories. Unfortunately I ended up going down too many wrong paths and ended up in a terrible abyss. There are a number of wonderful stories out there, but as Brian says, we are naturally drawn to the negative. We can’t help but look at the accident on the road when we pass it – feeling so sorry for what has happened, but so curious to explore the tragedy.

What has unraveled me is the issue of the change in my chromosome as well as the delay. When a doctor tells you about something and then asks if you have any questions, your mind has barely an opportunity to digest the information and is too focused on other details to be able to ask anything intelligible. Now that I have had time to process everything, I am stuck on the detail of what this change means for my prognosis. That is what I tried to investigate, but didn’t have nearly enough information to do so properly. Even if I knew everything and it was all bad, the reality is that what works for one person may or may not work for another. We are all individuals. I read a story about a man who went in with stage 4 AML (not even sure what that is) and he was a smoker and had kidney disease and diabetes. They didn’t think he was going to make it but did an autologous transplant and is several years in remission now, considered cured. On the other hand, there are all those tragic stories of young, healthy people in the prime of their life who did everything they could and didn’t make it. The bottom line is that it’s a crap-shoot. No matter how focused your mind, how healthy and pure your diet and how strong you try to be, there is only so much you can do. For a type-A personality like me, desperately trying to take control of my fate, this is out of my control.

I am not giving up. There is no reason to give up. There are still many things working in my favor. I just think that a couple of weeks ago, I truly believed that by focusing on gratitude and health and happiness, I had not only achieved it but would continue to. This has thrown me to the point that I see everything as a sign now of some tragic ending for me. I just want some sort of sign that there is hope. I know that having a matched donor is an incredible blessing, but I feel like I need a neon flashing sign! At the very least a good fortune cookie! Instead, I feel like every time I look for hope or distraction, it’s another reminder of what could be. I turned on the TV while I was working – hoping for distraction – and instead the commercial that was playing was talking about planning for your demise and taking care of your children! I turned it off.

Okay, meltdown is over. I need to concentrate on being productive. I guess I wanted to get that all out there so that this story is honest. Being SuperGirl means taking a few really hard hits sometimes. I’m exhausted and worn down, but I won’t give up. I meet with my transplant doctor tomorrow and plan to hope that he will be able to provide the encouragement that I need right now. I don’t believe they would tell me there is still a strong hope for a cure unless they meant it. I just want to know what the reality of my situation is. I don’t want false hope, just honest hope.