November 7th

I joined FMO to try and journal my feelings of loss, guilt, grief - and found it didn't  come so easily.  But after seven years to the day I can look back and understand how badly I was in denial about David's illness - every time I read, " survival rate is 35% after 5 years " or "sooner or later everyone dies from this disease ", I would brush it off as.....well, yes, but not for him. Not David. Of course not.
And with denial comes wrong choices, perhaps. A bigger hospital, different doctor, different treatment and just maybe a different outcome. A five year clinical trial finished six months after his death showed that his treatment was less effective than that suggested at one of our second opinions. Autologous transplant v. three years of chemotherapy. He loved his doctor, who pushed for transplant, and he wanted to get well, marry Lisa - and get on with his life. He did not want years of chemo and the side effects, one of which was neuropathy in his fingers. David's second love was music: he was a classical pianist and keyboard player in a metal band. So we did not stop him. The motherf..... of "what if" and "if only".
He did get well, played his music, lived with Lisa for a while and relapsed six months later. Now he needed a donor bone marrow transplant - there was no match in our family nor on the donor registry in the whole US. At the eleventh hour, a 24 year old female from Germany was found and she agreed - her blood was flown to Indianapolis. 
He died six weeks later, his hands tied to the bed rails as he tried to tear out the tubes that came in and out of him. He was bald, emaciated, covered in red blotches where the transplant was rejecting. He was my beautiful boy.
I don't know where the time has gone.