Debi Peterson

I've already told my story. I began losing weight several years ago. Between 2010 or so and April 2014, it wasn't much. I went from about 315-320 down to 273. So 40 or so pounds in 4 years isn't bad. It was in 2014 right after I was diagnosed with my 1st melanoma it began coming off quickly. In April I was at 273. I was hospitalized July 3 of that year and I was at about 243. The following April 2015 I was down to 204. Almost 70 pounds in a year is too fast. It was at that time my doctor discovered I was anemic. She said there were 2 main causes of anemia. One wasn't possible for me. The other was internal bleeding.
So, she began running all of these expensive tests to find the internal bleeding. The ones she had ordered were an echo cardiogram, CT scan and endoscopy/colonoscopy (I hated that one). All were okay except the CT scan. That showed enlarged lymph nodes. The radiologist recommended a PET Scan because of my history of melanoma. I had also scheduled an appointment with my oncologist (the cute one) to go over those results. It was my bone marrow that lit up like a neon sign. He recommended a bone marrow biopsy. It was done the next morning.
A week later I got part of the results but he was waiting for the genetics to come back to confirm. The final diagnosis was Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia or CMML1 with Trisomy 8--3 number 8 chromosomes. It is very rare and the only cure is a bone marrow transplant. This year I decided to move forward with it. I will eventually end up at Huntsman in SLC to have it done. Now that I figured out how to use this site, I will continue posting updates. Maybe not every day, but when I have something important.