My Getting of Wisdom (Clarity & Perspective) My getting of wisdom started uneventfully on a bright and sunny winter’s morning in 2018. It was a Tuesday, and I remember walking from my home in Paddington to the Kinghorn Cancer Centre in Darlinghurst. Even though I had a date with a bone marrow biopsy, I was remarkably upbeat and mostly just grateful that I could walk to my appointment on such a glorious morning. One thing about me, that hasn’t really changed much my whole life, is an unflinching optimism and sense that all will be well. It has stood me in good stead, especially on some of my darkest and most difficult days. When the receptionist at my haematologist’s rooms called me the following morning to say I should come in that afternoon, I was a little surprised, but also somewhat reassured when they explained that my specialist now had a meeting on Friday morning (when my appointment was scheduled) so would I mind coming in early? My husband was working in Singapore at the time, and a small part of me thought that maybe something was awry, so I called a friend and asked her to join me (just in case it wasn’t good news). It wasn’t. I will never forget the words that would change my life. “There is no easy way to tell you this Nicole, but you have acute myeloid leukaemia. It is a life-threatening illness, and you will need to be admitted to hospital tomorrow and start treatment on Friday.” She also said a whole bunch of other stuff that went in one ear and out the other, though I do remember her telling me that “there are survivors” which, call me crazy, was not in the least bit reassuring at the time, but I am getting ahead of myself. It was getting dark by the time my friend and I left the specialist’s rooms, and I had a million things to do. The adrenalin kicked in almost immediately, yet I was surprisingly calm and deliberate in everything I did in the following 24 (ish) hours prior to my admission to hospital the next day. I made dozens of calls and sent three times as many emails and texts as I informed, reassured, and comforted my family, friends, colleagues, clients, and my daughters’ school. There was so much to do and so many people to tell. But telling my then teenaged daughters was the hardest and most heart-breaking part. I was honest. I told them that although it was going to be unspeakably awful, I felt in my heart that it was going to be OK, and that we all needed to hold on to that. So, we did. Anyone who has been treated for blood cancer, or who knows anyone who has been treated for blood cancer, knows that it is beyond brutal. You can’t be treated as an outpatient because the treatment leaves you completely and comprehensively vulnerable to every manner of infection; viral, bacterial, fungal, you name it. You are on a cornucopia of anti-viral, anti-fungal and (sometimes also) antibiotics and other medication and each hospital stay lasts for weeks on end as you wait for your blood counts to recover signalling the return of some of your body’s natural immunity and protection against infection. Your hair falls out in clumps and every day there is some other bizarre thing happening in or on your body, from weird rashes and welts to inflammation that baffles your medical team on the daily. And then there’s the crushing fatigue that makes you long to be a new parent with colicky new-born triplets because you know that would be easier. You are woken at 6am every morning to give blood from a port that has been surgically implanted into your upper arm or chest and that makes you feel a bit like a robot, but you just get on with it knowing that all you can do is surrender to the process one day at a time. And sadly, there are no flowers when you’re a blood cancer patient, although everyone is desperate to send them to you. That’s because flowers come with an unacceptable risk of fungal infection from spores that might be present in deteriorating flower water. Yet, despite all of that, you mostly just suck it up knowing that as each day passes you are hopefully one step closer to going home. Home. How you long for it. And then, for me, almost 4 years later, I look back and feel that it was the best terrible experience of my life. And I feel so lucky. How can that be? Before I got sick, I would routinely berate myself and question the choices I had made in my career. Friends (close and further removed) from university, workplaces and life generally had pursued all sorts of impressive and powerful careers (not without great persistence and considerable sacrifice of course) and I would often ask myself if I should have done the same. Did I settle for less than I should have? What was I thinking? Then, during my second round of treatment, I remember looking out the window from the fifth floor of St Vincent’s at the world below, where everyone who was well was going about their business, largely oblivious to the challenges, fears, and misery of the hundreds of sick people in the building above them, and I had an epiphany. Although my first round of treatment had achieved remission, I knew by then that I needed a bone marrow transplant to have any chance of survival. I knew that I might die. And I felt a profound sense of calm, an unshakeable knowledge that the choices I had made up until then were the right ones for me. They had enabled me to live the slightly messy and imperfect, but happy life, I had lived up until then. A life that I loved. And I felt a strange sense of relief that if I did die, I would have lived the best life I could have lived (albeit much shorter than I would have liked). The period leading up to my transplant in October of 2018 was a strange time. I had a 6 week break between my last round of treatment and the transplant, which meant I could attend many of the special events associated with my eldest daughter’s final year of school. It was wonderful to attend special events to celebrate her last year of school, but it was also difficult to attend events where all eyes were on me (exacerbated I’m sure by my baldness) and where I knew that people, with the very best of intentions, found my mortality difficult to reconcile and almost impossible to know what to do with. There were a lot of tears (rarely mine) as people grappled with my illness and the possibility that I might die. That period also saw me hoping for the best, but planning for the worst, advice I received from a very wise older friend. New wills needed to be drafted and executed, financial arrangements had to be considered and long letters had to be written by me to my girls which included every possible piece of wisdom and advice I could conceivably think of to support them through their lives just in case I wasn’t there to tell them myself. It was hard. There is just a 25% chance that your sibling will be a perfect match as your bone marrow donor; so, I hit the jackpot when my sister was identified as exactly that. I was also especially lucky to have a sister who was as persuasive as she is tenacious, not accepting that her age should be a barrier to donating bone marrow to save my life, despite any protocols the hospital might have. She wasn’t having any of it. She was (and remains) a force to be reckoned with for whom I will always be eternally grateful. And on 17 October 2018, she made the donation of her bone marrow in the morning that would save my life and the transplant took place in the afternoon of the same day. There were some very hairy (no pun intended) days, weeks, and even months following the transplant, but here I am, alive and well, almost 4 years later. And while I am a little different physically, I think I am much more different in ways that you can’t see. Believe it or not, but my illness and the subsequent treatment, transplant and recovery took less from me than it gave. Having said that, I would not recommend it as a pathway to greater wisdom, clarity, or perspective. There must surely be better alternatives! And I also know that my experience is unique to me, and that every person diagnosed with and treated for blood cancer has their own individual experience that is likely very different to mine and that I cannot and do not pretend to understand. This is just my story. Greater Wisdom. More Clarity. Better Perspective. All delivered to me courtesy of my experience of leukaemia. It enabled me to clarify what matters most and to stop wasting time on people and problems and situations that just aren’t worth the effort. I am more reflective, a better listener and more in tune with the questions I should ask rather than the responses I should give or the comments I should make. I know what I can control and influence and invest neither time nor energy on what I can’t. I am better professionally; wiser, more insightful, and better able to peel away the layers of the onion. I am more compassionate and understand that compassion often trumps empathy because it allows you to support and comfort a fellow human being without making it about you. And I appreciate the banal even more than I did before (and I really did appreciate life’s simple pleasures before). When you spend weeks and then months on end in hospital, what you dream of and look forward to are not the fancy, expensive things you might think. It’s the simple stuff. Not feeling nauseous 24/7. Paradise. Lying on the floor next to your golden retriever and patting her head and paws and beautiful silky ears. Heaven. The taste of that first latte at your local cafe sitting on a wonky stool and feeling like the luckiest person in the world. Sublime. Sitting in a sunny spot with nowhere else to be and letting the warmth dance on your skin. Bliss. These are the things you long for. The things you dream of. What you miss is being able to taste and enjoy the food you love because the treatment has turned off your taste buds and stolen your appetite. It’s sitting on the couch with your kids on a Sunday night and watching that same Harry Potter movie for the umpteenth time. It’s being able to get dressed and go to work and see your people and do your thing. What you miss is every little moment that makes a life. So, as I approach the fourth anniversary of my transplant, it feels like the right time to participate in the Leukaemia Foundation’s Light the Night Campaign. I know I am one of the very lucky ones for a whole range of reasons. Of the four people I got to know well when I was in hospital, only two survived; a young mother who was diagnosed while still breast feeding her third child and a woman a little older than me whose diagnosis came completely out of the blue. Of the two who died, one was a remarkable and hilarious nun whom I adored and who had worked with Mother Theresa in India as a younger woman years earlier, and the other was a beautiful 19 year old boy whose heartbroken parents did everything they could to save him but it wasn’t to be. When I light my lantern on 30 September, I’ll be thinking of all of them, grateful for those of us who survived and deeply sad for those who didn’t and everyone who loved them. I’d love your support to help other people whose lives have been devastated by a blood cancer diagnosis feel lucky too.