A Post to the LLS Boards

I rarely write such in depth posts, especially to the people I met on the CML board on the LLS web site, but I figured that since it was pretty in depth and it summarized a lot of the stuff I've been thinking about that I might as well include it here as well. Enjoy!

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Things are going very well.  My treatment seems to be working as the doctors plan, with few side effects. I'm not lacking for candy, food, or entertainment thanks to friends, family, my Wii, Netflix, and Hulu. The only thing I wish is that my boyfriend could be around more often, but unfortunately he's stuck in College Park giving his students their final exams, and even once he does that he doesn't have a car so he can kind of only get up here based on when my other friends and family are stopping by.

Other than that, things are looking up and I'm excited to see my brother Bobby on Wednesday, since he's getting back in the US after being in Japan for several years doing missionary work.  He actually planned this four-month furlough before I was even diagnosed with CML in the first place, so things are kind of working out for us in that regard.  My other brother, Billy, is my bone marrow match, and we haven't tested Bobby yet and may not need to. I feel especially bad for my mom...  Christmas is her favorite holiday, and for the past few years she was so sad that Bobby wasn't around and that we could only see him over Skype.  She was so excited that we were all going to be together this year, but now it's just not going to happen, because my niece and nephew are too young to be allowed to visit.  So it looks like I'll be the one on Skype this year.

I think the hardest thing for my mom, and the rest of my very religious family, is that I'm an atheist.  My mom seems to think that it means I must have given in to despair now, when really that couldn't be further from the truth.  I just feel bad that it's such a struggle for them, and I wish they shared my point of view. If I could, I'd pretend that I had converted to Christianity while in here just to make them feel better about the possibility that I might not make it through this.  There are a few problems with that.  The first is purely a logistics problem; I'm a terrible liar and I can't keep a secret --- that's pretty much the entire reason I came out to my family when I was 16 years old, since living that lie had been weighing on me very heavily.  In fact, I only waited that long because I wanted to make sure I had my driver's license before I told them (because you hear some horror stories about children being disowned).  In retrospect, I don't know what I was so worried about.  I couldn't ask for a more loving, caring, or accepting family. That being said, the other problem with faking a religious conversion is that I couldn't possibly deal with the fallout.  I plan to survive this crap, and recanting my conversion once I'm out of the woods seems too cruel to even consider.

So I'm hoping that my mom can square herself with my beliefs that the world just is the way it is, and there isn't some divine hand reaching out to decide my fate, that all of this is due to chance and not due to either a cruel deity if things end up poorly or a benevolent deity if things work out well.

Thanks for keeping up with me. I've got plenty of time to just think about my situation, so I don't mind sharing if people want to hear it.  In fact, I think I'll post this on my blog as well, because I'm guessing my friends and family will be interested in reading this stuff as well.  In case I haven't mentioned it in a while, my blog is at http://livingwithcarmichael.blogspot.com ... I'd change the title now that I'm living with "Allistair" instead, but I'd prefer for people to still be able to find my blog.