Case History

I focused all of my energy on getting through each day.
But on one of my worst days, I told my mother that I understood why people asked for assisted suicides.
If things were never going to get any better than this, life wasn't worth living.

Even then, however, things were starting to turn around.
I was slowly growing stronger. My white-blood-cell counts, which had been blasted to zero, were returning to normal.
My immune system was recovering. In early September, I was released from the hospital.

The first year was a slow process of resuming normal life, watching for my hair to start growing (it finally did)…
… and working to regain my strength and muscle tone.
 My ovaries no longer functioned, and I would be on hormone-replacement therapy for the rest of my life.