Hi everyone. Thank you all so much. The power of Buffista love is amazing.

I'm in a room. I've had nineteen vials of blood drawn, a chest X-ray, spoken to three doctors, and tomorrow I am supposed to get an eeg, an echocardiogram, and a bone marrow biopsy, as well as install a central line into my neck. I can't believe that before 11:30 this morning, I didn't even know I had leukemia. I guess you can't say they aren't responsive here.

As far as what kind of leukemia: unknown. They expect to figure that out in the next 48 hours and then come up with a treatment plan and start right away. I think the most shocking thing in a day full of shocking things has been when they told me that I will most likely be here for a month, rather than a week. The idea of letting my entire life go is very hard to wrap my head around. Just...letting it go? How?

I can't process a possible prognosis, or how awful chemo might be, or what's going to happen to my hair, or my immune system. I'm still stuck on all the things I wanted to get done! Do I drop out of grad school? I have to cancel my trips to Florida and NY? (I do. Obviously.) I missed therapy today and forgot to tell my therapist. Thankfully, my boss has been amazing and is taking care of everything at work, which is considerable and also filled with irritating minutiae.

My neighbors (including Calli!) are taking care of my cat. Calli is even taking him to his annual vet appointment on Friday. So awesome. My friends T and G are flying down from NY tomorrow which has me in tears just thinking about it. My brother (!!!) has offered to fly in from Chicago. I'd joke that's how I know I'm dying for real, but I'm not quite there yet. It hasn't even been twelve hours! What. Is. Happening.

Steph, you made me laugh out loud, because my bff and my boss were helping me pack in a rush and were asking me which books to pack and all I could think was that all I wanted to read was GO fic. But I couldn't say that!

Updates from my new reality as I can. Thanks for the love. I expect I will totally flip out very soon.

Oh and they never would've found this at all if it weren't for the kidney stones, and the enlarged lymph nodes in my abdomen that they found when they did the CT scan in the ER. Which is frightening/amazing to think about, because I feel totally normal.

(Except my blood pressure is OFF THE CHARTS, but when I told the nurse I just found out that I have leukemia at lunch today, she said, "Oh, that's probably okay then.")

That is a lot in less than half a day, amyth.

I don't know T and G, but I'm now in love with them, and possibly also your brother.

Oh honey. It's a lot. Just make the very next decision for now. Another will follow & you make that one. And people will come out of the woodwork with good info to help you make informed decisions (and probably plenty of bad info you can ignore, too!)

{{{amyth}}} That's a lot to process all at once. Do you need books? Magazines? Anything at all?

Oh Amyth, how fucking terrible. I'm in the corner with sara with just doing it moment by moment.

Oh and they never would've found this at all if it weren't for the kidney stones

I was wondering about that.

For your distraction, we did discuss Good Omens in the streaming thread. It's a bucket thread, so you could run into talk of other shows, but the GO talk starts here: Topic!Cindy "Streaming 1: There Goes the Weekend" May 30, 2019 6:21:44 pm PDT

It might not be the most intellectual discussion we've ever had about TV. We mostly just agreed it was dreamy, delightful perfection.

Let me echo everyone else, amyth, anything you need that I can provide from here is yours. Including care packages as needed, just say the word.

I wish you easy treatment, tons of love and support, and a speedy recovery. {{{amyth}}}

That's a huge thing to grasp in one day, amyth. Also seconding sj -- we can send crossword puzzle books, or sudoku, or coloring books, and we can certainly provide fic recs.

So glad G and T are coming down to see you.