Cancer Forced Me to go Vegan

One day I was living my life. I was going to work at my dream job as a career counselor, I was carpooling with my husband to work every day and going home to spend time with friends and family every night. 

Then, over 4th of July weekend 2017, my friends and family and I started to get concerned about bruises on my legs. They kept appearing and it got to the point that there was no way that I had run in to things that many times. I made an appointment to see my doctor. Upon seeing her, I told her about some other symptoms I had been having as well including shortness of breath, the inability to walk up a flight of stairs without being winded, and some dizziness and vision issues. She was concerned and ordered a blood test. I was worried, but not too worried because every other time I had visited the doctor and gotten tests done, everything came back normal and it continued to be a mystery. I figured this would be another on of those times. 

That night, I received a phone call from the on-call doctor telling me that my blood tests were "wonky" and that I needed to get to the emergency room as soon as possible. I asked him why I needed to go to the emergency room, and he said my hemoglobin and platelet counts were so low that they could be effecting my organs, not only that, but they were concerned about Leukemia. I asked the doctor if he would tell my husband everything he had just told me. After he did that, my husband and I were off to the hospital and confirmed the Leukemia diagnosis at 4:00am that morning. It felt like a nightmare. I kept thinking, "This can't be real. I can't really have Leukemia." I was in denial. 

I ended up in the hospital for a whole month, the second day I was in the hospital, I was started on the strongest chemo they can put you on. At the time, I wasn't aware of that because I was in a daze and was asking for as little information as possible. After several blood transfusions, I recovered from the chemo and lost my hair. 

I was one of the lucky people, I went into remission after 1 dose of the chemo when only 50% of people normally do. Now, I am doing what they call consolidation chemo, where I have to go into the hospital for 3 days at a time and get 6 high doses of chemo. Then I go home, and wait for my blood counts to drop and then recover, during this time I get blood transfusions as needed, and am in charge of paying attention to how I'm feeling since I may need to go to the ER if I develop a fever or chills. Apparently, when your white blood cell count is at 0, an infection wreak havoc on the body and you have to go in for IV antibiotics immediately. 

After I was diagnosed with cancer, I started doing research on diet. And that is why I am starting this blog. I am on a journey to learn as much about dietary health as possible and I have started eating a plant-based-diet with as many vegetables as I can handle. 

I want to share my story with you, and help others out there understand what is healthy to eat and what things will help you avoid cancer and have to go through what I'm going through. 

I hope you enjoy my Vegan Blog!