Lisa Santos

It’s been a trying couple of weeks. Actually, couple of months.

I wanted to say thank you for the cards, thoughts, and prayers.🙏  As many of you know, I hadn’t been feeling well since returning from the winter break.

On the morning of Wednesday, January 29, I was heating up quiches, picking up donut holes, and mixing a bowl of berries for the January birthdays at Indian Valley School, but by 10am I’d received a couple of calls from my doctor asking me to return her calls. She asked me to return to Walnut Creek Kaiser that afternoon to get a bone marrow biopsy, after seeing some bloodwork numbers they had done the day before. 


I drove home and had Jeff take me to WC Kaiser. The bone marrow biopsy (which I knew a lot about from TV shows, like Greys Anatomy😅 ), was as bad as I thought it was going to be.  Ouch! With a fever of 102, they sent me straight to the emergency room after the biopsy. As I sat in the ER, doctors confirmed that it was leukemia.  The plan was to admit me to WC Kaiser, knowing that I’d be transferred to Oakland Kaiser, their leukemia center, as soon as they had an open bed.


I spent Wednesday night at WC Kaiser, and all of Thursday. On Thursday they put in an Hickman catheter, so chemo could start intravenously as soon as I was set up in the leukemia center.  I was ambulance-cabbed to Oakland Kaiser about 11pm Thursday night. (Fun trip with Jay and Matt from NORCAL Ambulance😃 )

With the confirmation that I had Acute Myeloid Leukemia, I started chemotherapy on Friday about 5pm. It was a 24 hour, seven day drip, with a bedside chemo boost through the iv port on the first three days. Now the chemo comes two times a day orally, along with ALL SORTS of other bags of liquid making their way into me via my Hickman catheter. 

This is just the beginning of my story, even if it's day 14 in my world. I'll continue to update when I'm having a good day.🙏