How did you know that you needed to go get checked out? It's a question that I've been asked more than a few times in recent weeks.
It's been almost 2 months since we first bumped up against the reality that something big might be up with my health. And in my first post, I mentioned how this cascade of events was triggered by my routine annual physical. Now that the diagnosis is in and confirmed, I've had some time to reflect on that question a little more.
Did I suspect something was up? The answer is yes, looking back, I can see that I have known for at least three years that something was not quite right, but maybe the eternal optimist in me would not allow me to consider that it was anything like leukemia.
In December 2020, COVID ran thru our house. We had the usual symptoms, but nothing too bad. All of us were back on our feet within a few days. But from right about that time, I began to notice a series of weird symptoms: pains in different parts of my body. They were never at the same time, or in the same place. For example, I was on a solo bike ride – just my usual mid-week 25-miler – when suddenly, my back just seized up. It felt like someone had jabbed a knife under my left shoulder blade. I had to stop my ride, pull over and lay down on the side of the road for a few minutes. For the next three to four weeks, I'd get these crippling back spasms. They'd come on suddenly, last for about two to three minutes, and just as quickly they'd disappear. Very odd. The muscular pains began migrating around to different parts of my body. Not always spasms, but always sort of random: the pain migrated to my left thigh, and then a few weeks later, to my right shoulder, and then to a spot right under my right breast.
Over the course of the past three years, a few times, I'd be concerned enough with a specific pain that I'd visit my primary care doc, Doug Brown, to discuss it. I was certainly getting more bronchial infections than I should have been. Was I having heart issues? Did I have something wrong with my lungs? The few tests we ran invariably came up negative. Between the two of us, we pondered that maybe my body was just dealing with residual viral impact from COVID, as there was nothing else that was obvious. There's been some evidence that the COVID virus attacks the central nervous system, and these viral "fragments" could be triggering pains around my body.
But along with the random pain symptoms, I noticed other things that we also were attributing to "long covid": I'd get a string of headaches that would last for several days at a time. I was easily fatigued. I'd get out of breath walking up 2 flights of stairs. Some days I'd be so exhausted I'd roll out of my office chair and sleep curled up on the floor for an hour or two in the middle of the day. Then about a year or two ago, I started feeling a general achiness in my bones. Mostly in my thigh bones, but also in my upper arms. I'd wake up in the morning and all my joints would feel stiff and achy. I'd think to myself, "Jeez, getting older sucks. If this is what I feel like at age 60, I can't imagine what I'm gonna be like at 70 or 80!" I'd secretly knew that I shouldn't be feeling like I was 90 years old. But then I'd pop a couple of ibuprofen and go about my day. Nothing much to be concerned about.
I began thinking that these symptoms were perhaps lifestyle related. Maybe I needed to clean up my eating and drinking habits. Like so many people, we had upped our alcohol intake during the COVID lock down, and probably hadn't moderated it enough since then. I could probably cut down on a few drinks each week. If I was out running errands I might stop at McDonald's for two cheesburgers and fries; not the best nutritional choice, but YUM! I was still doing my 4-shot daily espresso jump-start, with a mid-morning topper-upper. Maybe my body was reacting to too much caffeine? Maybe I was getting inflammation from the things I was putting in my body?
I did some modifications. I definitely cut down on alcohol. I went from a nightly cocktail or two down to just one or two drinks a week. In January 2023 I quit coffee cold turkey, and replaced it with herbal and green teas. My favorite tea store, Fava Teas in Brookfield, has a special blend they called Ache Away Green Tea. It's a wellness blend of green tea, ginger, peppermint and citrus, that touts its anti-inflammatory properties. That tea has become my new morning ritual. I also eat more berries than a grizzly bear these days – they're anti-inflammatory, you know. Not bears. The berries.
So low level, yes. I've been trying to pinpoint and dial in something that was not quite right in my body for some time now.
And how do I feel now? I'll say about 30% of the time I just sorta feel like I'm coming down with the flu: general achiness and fatigue. My bones ache and my muscles are twitchy. And for about three or four months now, I've been getting tingly, numby sensations in my hands and feet. All of these, of course, are symptoms of anemia and leukemia.
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