Hey yall! Im Candice. I am 32 years old, married, and I have 4 children. I was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia on March 21st, 2019.
My journey started in 2018 when I began experiencing pain in both breasts. I went to the doctor and tests where ordered to rule out breast cancer. I was sent to a surgeon who did in fact rule out breast cancer but wanted to perform surgery on both breasts to remove tissue and benine masses that were found so my discomfort would not continue. On February 28th, 2019 I went in to have my procedure done. When doing routine blood work beforehand, they discovered all of my counts where off, and I mean way off. After my procedure I went home as expected and I followed up with my regular doctor on March 5th, 2019 to repeat the bloodwork tests. That bloodwork showed even worse results so I was admitted into the hospital for an overnight stay for more tests. During my stay, I seen my oncologist/hemotologist for the first time. He seemed to think that I did not have cancer but wanted to do more bloodwork that tested for specific blood cancers. In the meantime of waiting on those results, I had another breast surgery on the left side to remove a hematoma that formed on March 13th, 2019. There was only two weeks in between these two surgeries.
This is where the real nightmare began.......I began feeling sick on the inside of my body. Severly fatigued, no appetite, weight loss, and just the feeling of sick doesn't begin to describe how I was feeling. I seen my oncologist in his office on March 21, 2019 where he told me that my blood work came back as having "chronic myeloid leukemia" and that people with the beginning stage of it do not normally have symptoms but due to the trauma my body had experienced in the last four weeks, those symptoms have shown up. As of right now I have not started treatment. We are waiting on the bone marrow biopsy results before we decided which treatment would be the best for me.
I want to try and document my life daily. I want what I am going through to help someone else. I want my good days to be an inspiration and I want my bad days to be a time where it brings people closer together. I do not know what the future holds or how this road will go or end, but I want "chronic myeloid leukemia" to know that it will NOT define me and who I am!
Here is a website to provide more information on chronic myeloid leukemia:
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/chronic-myeloid-leukemia.html 
