Zelia, India

Hi,

I'm a leukemia warrier. "Covid was a blessing in disguise, for you", this is what my doctor told me when I was accidentally detected with an enlarged spleen during my lung CT scan. Then started treatment for covid & speculations on why this enlarged spleen! However when blood tests were done my counts had dropped. Covid was difficult to manage with the dropping counts. I was transfused whole blood twice but the counts didn’t improve. This was when I was admitted in the ICU and underwent a bone marrow test. There was pain, both physically & mentally, agony, fear all emotions that I had never experienced before, as I was alone in the Covid ICU without my family. The bone marrow result was  'hairy cell leukemia' (HCL), a type of rare blood cancer. With prayers and wishes I sailed through covid. It took more than a month for the test to turn negative. 

On my birthday I was finally free from covid. Next day I was admitted for chemotherapy which was a 7 day back to back infusion. My body was frail and it was difficult as days passed on. On day 6, I was down with high fever. My chemotherapy was stopped and whole blood & platelets with strong antibacterial, antifungals and antivirals was administered. The fight was on...finally at the end of 23 days my counts were better and I returned back home.

Another journey of being cautious, not contracting infections, fever, etc started. Three years passed by with regular monitoring and caution.

Then one fine day my platelets showed a lower count. This was on for another 10 months, then finally a blood smear test revealed recurrence of HCL. This was not a pleasant part of life-recurrence. The thoughts of the previous chemotherapy were haunting me. I had to undergo the trial again.

Chemotherapy for the recurrence started last year in Nov. This time I successfully completed it in 21 days with fever but without blood transfusion.

Today it's been 2 month post chemo, I'm masked, at my workplace doing passionately what I like most.

Hi again, this is Zelia, an entrepreneur, a mother of 2 sweets kids, associated with a cancer NGO & running a successful healthcare & advertising agency in India.