I'm an ALL Leukemia survivor (~89' to ~95') and this is incredibly encouraging to hear. I'll never forget the long hospital stays, early-morning surgeries, and now, the long-term impact to my life (it changes your entire personality).
I hope we eventually stomp it out. No child deserves to go through that. Here's hoping we can take what's been learned in the West and see to it that all kids get access to affordable treatment.
> My son, not I, had ALL and is in remission.
That's excellent to hear. Send him a high five for me.
> For the rest of his family (parents and sibling) it had a massive impact. I already had anxiety issues (TBI while in the military flipped that switch), now I have something my doc describes as health related PTSD.
I'm sorry to hear that. My own family was definitely affected by all of it. If it will help, I'd be happy to talk whenever you'd like (email [1], phone—whatever works)—it's a hell of a lot to process/cope with especially on top of the other stuff you're dealing with—don't hesitate.
[1] me@ryanglover.net
> it changes your entire personality
Sure.
I spent a lot of time in the hospital receiving treatment. Sometimes it was a few days, sometimes it was a month. My parents were working and so while I'd see them in the morning and evenings, most days I was on my own w/ the occasional nurse or doctor pop in. That led me to have a very independent (sometimes standoffishly so—mainly because I got tired of being poked at by doctors and nurses as a kid) personality and had to learn to amuse myself and be resourceful.
In addition to that, while I would attend school fairly regularly, I was "the sick kid" who was gone for weeks or a month at a time, so I didn't really form a lot of early bonds with the kids in my class. As an adult lone wolf type, I tend to smirk at that because that's essentially what I had to learn to be in those early years.
Another thing that I find amusing is that I would watch a lot of movies while I was in the hospital. I remember they would always play the same few movies:
- Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder version)
- Ghostbusters
- Gremlins
What's funny is that a good chunk of my personality is a mix of the characters in these movies. I like to have fun with people and keep them on their toes like Wonka, I like to invent/build/take risk on my own ideas like the Ghostbusters (my wife also said Pete Venkman reminds her of me), and I've always been a bit of a trouble maker/chaos monkey like a gremlin.
As an adult, I've noticed that I have an in-built preference toward self-sufficiency and tend to work/be alone most of the time and I'm hyper-sensitive to people "poking" at me (or someone else—I love going after a bully). I'd also say that I developed a high EQ and awareness of and for others (like an ability to quickly read people and know what they're feeling—my grandpa refers to it as "acute awareness").
Several years back the "why" of all this started to click when I read Maria Montessori's book—The Absorbent Mind [1]—on the first few years of childhood development (~0-6 years). She explains that kids are like sponges and their personality forms relative to what they experience in those first few years. When I think about the mix of experiences during those days, I can't help but laugh—that theory is dead on.
I also read Thomas Sowell's [2] late-talking children because I remembered being taken to a speech therapist as a kid because I refused to talk. I had no problem talking, I just didn't want to. Even today, I have quiet phases where I just kind of drift off into my own little world and don't really talk much.
Would I say that having Leukemia specifically gave me all of these traits? No, but I would say that the combination of circumstances in relation to my treatment definitely did.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Absorbent-Mind-Maria-Montessori/dp/08...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Late-Talking-Children-Thomas-Sowell/d...
My son, not I, had ALL and is in remission.
I don't know how to quantify the impact it had on him from a personality perspective, as he is severely autistic and barely speaks. He was in treatment from age 3 to 6.
For the rest of his family (parents and sibling) it had a massive impact. I already had anxiety issues (TBI while in the military flipped that switch), now I have something my doc describes as health related PTSD.