A Conversation With My Bone Marrow on Her 15th Birthday

Yesterday marked my fifteenth straight year without cancer. I think about that. I even conversed with my bone marrow about it. And of course I wrote about it.As published onGatherDCMy 15-year-old “daughter” says that since I was born in the period when the sun passed through the constellation Capricornus, I’m—according to her favorite lifestyle magazine Elle—charming, graceful, and a freak in the sheets, lady in the streets. My daughter says this as we sit at our pollen-covered bis tro set on the covered balcony of our ninth-floor apartment overlooking Crystal and Pentagon Cities. Clouds have rolled in and it has begun raining.“I’m so glad I got that messy self-exploration out of the way!” I tell my daughter. “Now that I know myself fully, I can begin honing my sheets-and-streets skills.”It ’s cool being able to talk like this with my daughter. Though, that’s because I didn’t conceive her. She’s the stem cells collected from an anonymous baby girl’s umbilical cord. The cells were transplanted into me on April 24, 2003, to treat my second cancer called myelodysplasia. Those st em cells repopulated inside my bone marrow, and now my blood is her XX blood. My immune system is partially hers. I am partially her.Keep readingA Conversation With My Bone Marrow on Her 15th BirthdaySome Recent Social Media PostsMybone marrow turns 15!Mybook review of...the better James Bond?Don't watchA Quiet Place at night by yourself like I did. Just don't.
Source: cancerslayerblog - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: cancer-free anniversary life lessons Source Type: blogs