Hi my name is Lindsay, I stopped working in 2012. I am a licensed hair stylist, but in nov. of 2012 I got the worst possible news ever. My mom who was also a hair stylist was never sick and never did drugs or drank, ate healthy and was only 56 yrs old was diagnosed with acute plasma cell lymphoma (a very rare form of multiple myeloma) cancer of your immune system. When it was found the doctor literally told her she had 3 wks without chemo and maybe 3 months with aggressive chemo. Her bone marrow was so full of cancer that it was spilling out into her body because it had no were else to go. Shock and disbelief is an understatment. My mom asked me to move home and stop working so that I could be her primary caregiver, I took a crash course in her kind of cancer she had and with her oncologist help and time I became her nurse. Caring for my mother was a complete honor, never a burden and I would have done it the rest of my life to have her here now. I appreciate the time I got to spend with her no matter how unbelievably hard it was to see her go from the mom I always knew, wanted to be just like, the women I watched do her hair get dressed put her make up on everyday in the summer my entire childhood and even into high school. I always wanted to be just like her. And after a few hits of chemo through IV and a chemo pill(revlamin) that I literally could not even touch with my hands because it could make me sick or even unable to have children, she looked like a diffrent person I used to pray to god to give it to me, let me have it just please not my mom. My mom and I learned so much during this time. against all odds my mom started getting better, we knew this was in no way a fix but a year and a half later we were going strong! It was like I didn't act scared because I didn't want her to feel scared so I was being strong for her, and I know she wasn't acting scared because she didn't wanna scare me. Her oncologist from the helen graham center in christiana delaware dr. mishel was the best we could ask for we would go in for a doctors visit 2xs a week and I would literally have at least 15 questions for him to answer and he would answer them and always encourage me on how great of a job I was doing and that he was amazed at how I could retain the info after being told one time. I guess when its your mom and you want so badly to help her live and for her to not be scared ( she never acted scared) and for her to not hurt. I would have done ANYTHING to save her, make it easier on her, and I was always taught that if you really want something you can have it if you give it everything you have inside of you to get it, you might have to fight for it but if you give it your all you will get it in the end, in 2014 we were given an option that we were never supposed to have. It was clinical trials and the survival rate wasn't good 20% survival rate but it was our only option if my mom wanted to live, due to the rare form of cancer (my mom was a goody too shoe and always did everything better, even when it came to getting cancer) I used to tease her that she couldnt even like half azz getting cancer, she had to go for the rarest, fastest growing and most uncontrollable kind. At the university of penn there was a dr. stokmeyer (not the right spelling for his name) he studied the kind of cacer my mom had and there was a new clinical trial a stem cell transplant, there are two diffrent kinds one they can actually use your own immune system or stem cells they can clean them and literally give em back healthy and without cancer in hopes that the new ones will kick any of the cancerous cells azz if the body spits any out with that a cure. Of course the other kind of stem cell transplant is alot more dangerous and involved and my mom could only do the one using somebody elses stem cells, my mom's sister was a match, we had to go to the university of Penn for a lot of appts prior to this being done along with a class where they explain what is going to happen during this procedure there were 3 other couples there a husband and his wife was with him, and another mother and daughter. We signed a bunch of papers, they explained to us as much as they could about what was going to happen and they walked us threw the transplant part of the hospital, at this time my mom's cancer was back full force and with avengence it was like it was actually mad that we got rid of it and were able to keep it under control enough to allow her to be able to try this, it was our last hope because after a while the chemo stops working. It was scarey my mom would even get a new birthday they would do 2 days of intensly strong chemo and then 3 days of full body radiation to destroy her bone marrow because that's where your blood cells grow form and divide, and then she would get the stem cells from her sister, this process was so bad that I had the 2 head transplant doctors and 3 head transplant nurses in a room on one side of the table I was standing on the other they had made a few mistakes with her medicine, and everything was regeim so basically they would give a 300pound man the same amount of radiation.
